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Works by Rev. Alex, Robertson^ D.D. 

THE BIBLE OF ST. MARK : The Altar 

AND Throne of Venice. 

"A welcome contribution to ecclesiastical archaeology ... in 
every detail an artistic work, of use to the student, the traveller, 
and the general reader." — Globe. 

FRA PAOLO SARPI: The Greatest of the 

Venetians. With Illustrations and a Facsimile 
Letter. Second Edition, crown 8vo, cloth, price 6s. 

" Fra Paolo Sarpi is one of the most interesting figures in the 
whole range of literary and ecclesiastical history. . . . The reader 
will find Mr. Robertson's volume both interesting and instructive." 
— The Times. 

"Having perused your whole work, I think it is a valuable 
addition to our British literature in the historic branch, and I 
trust it may do much towards advancing the memory of ' Fra 
Paolo Sarpi' towards the high place which it is entitled to hold." 
— W. E. Gladstone. 

THROUGH THE DOLOMITES : A Prac- 
tical, Historical, and Descriptive Guide-Book 
TO THE Scotland of Italy. 

"The Author . . . has conferred a boon upon all future visitors 
to Northern Italy." — The Globe. 

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN 

ITALY. 

"Dr. Robertson is a shrewd observer, a profound thinker, and 
an able writer. He has an intimate and extensive acquaintance 
with Italian life." — English Churchman. 

COUNT CAMPELLO AND CATHOLIC 

REFORM IN ITALY. 

"The book is written in a spirit of toleration. Is worthy of its 
subject and of the cause which it is intended to support." — The 
Glasgow Herald. 



Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson dn' Co. 
At the Ballantyne Press 



VENETIAN SERMONS 



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Venetian Discourses 
Drawn from the History, 
Art &" Customs of Venice 
Sy Alexander Robertson, d.d., 

Cavaliere of the Order of St, Maurice and 
St. Lazarus, Italy Ji*^ j9^ j^ J9^ .§^ j^ 
<^uthor of "The Bible of St. Mark," &c. 
With Seventy-three Illustrations j»^ jaf* jsi* 




New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 

London: George Allen, '\E(iiskin House 

1907 



MSONT PLEASANT BRANCH 






TO Mr WIFE 






i.7i_5(r/ 



DiSTRICT OF COLUMBIA PEOPERTT 
fH.Ati^imMm> FEOM PVBUQ LIBRARY 

PREFACE 

Venice was the most stable, the most peace- 
ful, the most prosperous, and the longest- 
lived Republic the world has ever seen. 

*' Through many an age in the mid-sea she dwelt, 
From her retreat calmly contemplating 
The changes of the Earth, herself unchanged. 



A scene of light and glory, a dominion 
That has endured the longest among men." 

Such being the case, nothing, I think, 
could be more opposed to reason and to 
probabilif-y , thjin the .notion, too commonly- 
entertained, that slie owed her superlative 
greatness to a policy and to practices that 
savoured of piracy and pillage, of tyranny 
and injustice, of cruelty and oppression. 
And, from my own study of Venice and 
Venetian history, I am prepared to say 
that no notion could be more opposed to 
truth and to fact.* The more I know of 
the old Venetians, the more I feel called 
upon to admire not only their marvel- 
lous energy and industry, their perseverance, 



Vlll 



PREFACE 



intelligence, and wisdom, but also their justice 
and humanity, their healthy morality, and their 
manly piety. 

On the gable of the Church of San Giacomo, 
at the Rialto, the old commercial centre of 
the city, Venice carved, for the guidance of 
her merchants, who trafficked around it, 
the following inscription — as legible to-day 
as when cut a thousand years ago, and 
which Mr. Ruskin says it was the pride of 
his life to discover : — 

" Around this temple, let the merchants' law be just ; 
Let not their weights be false, nor their covenants 
unfaithful." 

And at St. Mark's, the old judicial centre 
of the city, above the door that connects 
Church and Palace — the ,Doge's chapel and 
the Doge's home — Vertlce' 'carved also in that 
far-back time, for the guidance of her Prince, 
these significant words : — 

" Love justice, render to all their rights ; 
Let the poor, the widow, the ward, and the orphan, 

O Doge ! 
Hope in thee as their protector. Be gentle to all. 
Let not fear, nor hate, nor love, nor gold bias thee. 
Thou art Doge ; but as a flower thou wilt perish and 

become dust ; 
And as thy deeds have been, so, after death, thy fate 

will be." 



PREFACE ix 

Moreover, in the speeches of the Doges, 
in the mosaics of her churches, in the 
pictures of her palaces, as well as in the 
books she printed and in the education 
she gave her sons, we have evidence of 
how genuine was her love, and how wide- 
spread was her knowledge, of the Holy 
Scriptures. 

In this Biblical knowledge possessed by the 
Venetians, and in the spirit of righteousness 
which animated them, as shown by the in- 
scriptions I have given above, we have, I 
think, a key to the explanation of the pros- 
perity and longevity of the Republic. It was 
because her rulers and her people practised 
in daily life a lofty morality, the outcome 
of a vital religious faith, that she 

« Rose, like an exhalation from the deep,'' 

and gained, and maintained, her proud pre- 
eminence amongst the nations. 

Venice, therefore, cannot but be full of 
lessons for the preacher and for the hearer. 
It lends itself, as perhaps no other European 
city does, to Biblical illustration. During 
the years I have lived and worked in it, I 
have found this to be the case ; and I have 
been accustomed, from time to time, thus to 
use it in my pulpit ministrations. In doing 



X PREFACE 

so I know that travellers always appreciated 
my efforts, and that they found it much 
more profitable to think of Venice as fitted 
to afford them wholesome and Christian 
teaching, and to stimulate them to live nobly, 
than as being only, what at the close of her 
career she did become, 

" The pleasant place of all festivity, 
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy." 

My hope is, through the publication of 
these sermons, to reach and influence a 
wider circle than I can in my Venetian 
" upper room," and to lead my readers to 
regard and study Venice from this same 
standpoint, in order that they may derive 
a similar benefit ; for I believe that Venice 
appeals to the mind and to the heart, not 
only of those who visit her shores, but of 
all who take an intelligent interest in human 
affairs. Venice is dear to all lands, and 

" Most of all, 

Albion ! to thee ; the Ocean Queen should not 
Abandon Ocean's children." 

ALEXANDER ROBERTSON. 

Venice, November 1905. 



CONTENTS 

I. THE PALACE 

PAGE 

" Polished after the similitude of a palace.^' — Psalm 

cxliv. 12 . . . . . . . 3 

II. THE DOOR 

^^ I am the door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be 
saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. ^^ 
— John x. 9 . . . . . '33 

III. ST. MARK 

^^ John, whose surname ivas Mark^ — Acts xii. 25 . 59 

IV. STONES OF MEMORIAL 

" What mean ye by these stones P " — Joshua iv. 6 . 95 

V. LIVING WATER 

** If thou knetuest the gift of God, and nvho it is that 
saith to thee. Give me to drink ; thou ivouldest have 
asked of him, and he would have given thee living 
ivater.^^ — John iv. 10 . . . . • I33 

VI. TEMPLES OF GOD 

" Te are the temple of God.^^ — i Cor. iii. 16 

** Te are the temple of the living GodJ^ — 2 Cor. vi. t6 157 



xii CONTENTS 



VII. THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 

PAGE 

" And he arose, and rebuked the tvind, and said unto 
the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and 
there was a great calm. ''^ — Mark i v. 39 . .185 

VIII. THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 

(palm Sunday) 

*' And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, 
cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David! 
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the 
Lord!^^ — Matt. xxi. 9 .... 207 

IX. THE ASCENSION 

" While they beheld, he ivas taken up ; and a cloud re- 
ceived him out of their sight.'*^ — Acts i. 9 . . 227 

X. PENTECOST 

^^ And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and 
began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit 
gave them utterance.'''' — Acts ii. 4 . . . 247 

XI. ALL SAINTS' DAY 

" Followers of them who through faith and patience in- 
herit the promises.'^ — Hebrews vi. 12 . . 267 

XIL THE OLIVE TREE 

" But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God^ 

— Psalm fii. 8 285 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Molo of Venice .... Frontispiece 

To face page 

A Venetian Palace (Ca' D'Oro) ... 2 

The Natural Soil of Venice ... 6 

Foundation Courses of Palazzo Grimani . 14 

Palace Walls of Brick (Campo Mater Domini) 18 

Marble Disk Ornamentation (Palazzo Dario) 22 

Elements of Beauty in Common-place Life . 26 

Christ the Door 32 

"I AM THE Door" 36 

Christ the Keystone 40 

" I know My Sheep and am known of Mine " 44 

Christ the One Door 50 

St. Mark writing his Gospel . . -58 
The Winged Lion at Portal of the Doge's 

Palace 60 

Scenes from the Life of St. Mark . . 62 

St. Mark writing his Gospel ... 66 
St. Mark submitting his Gospel for St. 

Peter's Approval 70 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

To face page 

St. Mark, stranded in the Lagoon, receiving 

Angelic Vision 72 

Embarkation of St. Mark's Body . 
Reception of St. Mark's Body in Venice 
Prayer for Discovery of St. Mark's Body 
Rediscovery of St. Mark's Body . 
Chair of St. Mark .... 

Judgment of Solomon .... 
Patera with Birds and Animals (Ca' dj 

Mosta) 

Peacocks — Symbol of Regenerated Life 
The Angel of His Presence (Ca Popolin, Campo 

S. Margherita) ..... 
Pax huic Domini — " Peace be to this House 

(Palazzo Contarini Porta di Ferro) 
St. Mark's Campanile Inscription . 
Inscription on San Giacomo di Rialto . 
Capital of Judgment Angle Column . 
Stone in Campo S. Zaccaria, forbidding 

Gambling, Swearing, &c. 
Column of Infamy to Bajamonte Tiepolo 
Stone of Infamy, Doge's Palace . 
Christ and the Woman of Samaria 
Gothic Well-head in Cloisters of San 

Gregorio 134 

Gossiping Venetian Women drawing Water 136 



74 
76 
80 
84 
88 

94 



100 

102 

106 
108 
no 
114 

118 

122 
124 
132 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



XV 



Byzantine Well, Palazzo Mocenigo 
Ornate Gothic Well-head in Courtyard of 

A Palace .... 
Gothic Well at Murano 
Gothic Well in a Campo 
Temple of St. Mark .... 
Union of the Doge's Palace and Chapel 
Church of San Moise, An " Impious Building ' 
St. Mark's Church — " An Open Bible " 
The One Large Door — Suggestive of Fel 

LOWSHIP .... 
Christ teaching from the Boat 
Christ stilling the Tempest . 
Intricacies of Lagoon Navigation 
The Prophet Zaccariah 
The Triumphal Entry . 
Group of Eastern Palms 
Pigeons of St. Mark 
Group of Bordighera Palms . 
Setting out to Wed the Adriatic 
The Bucintoro 
The Ascension Cupola . 
The Magi worshipping Christ 
St. Luke writing his Gospel . 
St. John writing his Gospel . 
Humility and Benignity 



To face page 
. 140 



144 
148 

156 
160 
164 
168 

188 
194 
200 
206 
210 
214 
218 
222 
226 
228 
232 

238 
240 
242 



xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

To face page 

Pentecost Cupola 246 

Tongue of Fire on Apostle's Head . . 250 
Elamites who heard the Gospel in their 

OWN Tongue 254 

Cretes and Arabians who heard the Gospel 

IN THEIR own Tongue .... 258 

Tongue of Fire on Apostle's Head . . 262 

Bridge of Boats to the Campo Santo . . 266 

Church of the Campo Santo . . . 272 

Decorating the Graves at the Campo Santo 276 

An Olive Grove and Olive Mill . . . 284" 
"They shall still bring forth Fruit in 

Old Age" 294 

Olive Tree Terraces ..... 302 



THE PALACE 



" That our sons may be as plants grown up in 
their youth : that our daughters may be as corner 
stones, polished after the similitude of a palace." 

— Psalm cxliv. 12. 



I 

THE PALACE 

" Polished after the similitude of a -palace.^'' 

— Psalm cxliv. i 2. 

Venice is a city of palaces. Wherever one 
goes, whether on foot amongst the intricacies 
of its narrow winding calles^ or in gondola 
amongst its scarcely less tortuous canals, one 
never fails to see noble piles of building. 
They might be royal residences : they are the 
palatial homes of the people. It is true that 
they show the marks of age, of defacement and 
decay. Time and tide and tempest, neglect 
and vandalism, have set their seal upon them, 
yet they all bear evidences of stability and 
security, of richness and refinement, of grace 
and dignity and beauty. Their constructive 
and artistic merit is marvellous. They exhibit 
" good architecture, which has life and truth 
and joy in it." Their variety, too, is striking 
and interesting. They represent different 



4 VENETIAN SERMONS 

schools of architecture — Byzantine, Gothic, 
Lombardic, Renaissance. Nor are those of 
any one school copies of each other. They 
are alike, and yet different, as are the leaves 
of a tree, or the " salt sea wavelets that break 
on their foundations." 

In my text a palace is spoken of as an 
object the excellences of which should figura- 
tively find their counterpart in a well-con- 
structed character and life. We are called 
upon to have characters and lives " polished 
after the similitude of a palace." The figure 
is a happy one, fitted to afford us instruction 
and benefit, and in following it out we need 
not transfer ourselves in thought to Palestine, 
but simply take, for purposes of analogy, those 
palaces we see around us in Venice, which are, 
indeed, like much else in this city, not a little 
Eastern in character. In studying them we 
shall see how each part, from basement to 
cornice, and even the very soil in which they 
are planted, has its lesson for us. Beginning 
with this last, I shall go steadily upward in 
the building. 

(i) The soil on which these palaces stand. 
— The strangeness of the position of these 
palaces — rising out of the water, their bases 
washed by every flowing tide — leads the mind 



THE PALACE 5 

at once to think of the nature of the soil on 
which they stand. Surely of all soils it must 
be the most unsuitable to sustain the weight 
of very massive buildings ? And this it is ; for 
what is the soil of Venice ? It is, for the most 
part, but shifting mud and sand. There is no 
rock, there is hardly any clay, or substratum 
of compactness and solidity. All is loose and 
soft and incoherent. One cannot dig a foot 
or two beneath the surface without coming to 
water. The whole soil consists of beds of 
sediment brought down from the Dolomite 
Alps, to the north, and deposited here by the 
great rivers, the Piave, the Brenta, the Adige, 
and the Po, which in ages gone by passed 
through these lagoons to the sea. To realise 
what Venice stands on, one has but to climb 
any church tower in the city, or in the neigh- 
bouring islands, and look at the land visible 
above the ebbing tide around. It will be 
seen to consist of clusters of low-lying islands, 
of long stretches of level sand, and of fields 
of brown and green seaweed, that lose them- 
selves in the distance towards the mainland and 
the sea. The fishermen, frequenting these 
shoals and shallows in search of shell-fish and 
bait, will be seen to sink in the plashy surface. 
" Or," as Mr. Ruskin says, '' let the traveller 



6 VENETIAN SERMONS 

follow in his boat at evening the windings of 
some unfrequented channel far into the midst 
of the melancholy plain, . . . and so wait 
until the bright investiture and sweet warmth 
of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, 
and the black desert of their shore lies in its 
nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfort- 
less, infirm, lost in dark languor, and fearful 
silence, except where the salt rivulets plash 
into the tideless pools, or the seabirds flit from 
their margins with a questionable cry ; and he 
will be enabled to enter in some sort into the 
horror of heart with which this solitude was 
anciently chosen by man for his habitation." 
No place less tempting, no soil less adapted 
for the erection of palaces, could be found. 

Since, then, we are called upon to have 
characters and lives polished after the simili- 
tude of a palace, it is natural first to think of 
the nature of the soil of the heart on which 
they are to be raised. This, like the soil 
of Venice, is most unsuitable. There is no 
stability, no steadiness of purpose towards that 
which is noble and good inherent in it. On 
the contrary, there is an indwelling tendency 
and bias towards that which is evil. This 
is proclaimed in the pages of the Bible from 
Genesis to Revelation. " Every imagination 



THE PALACE 7 

of the thoughts of his heart is only evil con- 
tinually." "The heart of the sons of men 
is full of evil, and madness is in their heart 
while they live." " It is witnessed to," as Canon 
Liddon has said, " by the actual facts of human 
nature, for in practice men themselves treat 
their own human nature not as a thing of 
ideal excellence, but as some restless and dis- 
turbing force, against which man himself, even 
in his own interests as a member of his own 
society, must necessarily take precautions of law 
and of police." Seneca has said, " We are all 
wicked ; what one blames in another, each will 
find in his own bosom." And Huxley has 
left these words : " The doctrines of original 
sin, and of the innate depravity of man, 
appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth 
than the liberal popular delusion that babies 
are all born good." Not only so, but when 
one resolves in his own strength to be noble 
of heart and to live nobly, and even summonses 
to the struggle all the energies of his being, 
he does not succeed. As St. Paul has said 
with reference to his natural state of heart, 
"The good that I would I do not; the evil 
that I would not, that I do." And Luther 
said, before his conversion, " In vain do I make 
promises to God, sin is ever the stronger of the 



8 VENETIAN SERMONS 

two." The old Adam was more than a match 
for the young Melancthon. The natural heart, 
like the Slough of Despond in John Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress^ swallows up whole cartloads 
of good intentions. 

But the instability, the unadaptability of the 
soil of Venice for the raising on it of palaces 
has been overcome ; for there they stand, and 
have stood for centuries, exciting the admira- 
tion of travellers from every land. And even 
so the inherent and acquired moral deteriora- 
tion and depravity of the human heart can be 
overcome, and the soil of the heart, like that 
of Venice, be so changed, that characters and 
lives can be raised upon it " polished after the 
similitude of a palace." 

(2) How the necessary change in the soil was 
effected. — To overcome the natural instability 
of the soil for building upon, and to fit it to 
bear the weight of palaces, the old Venetians 
went northward, to the forests of the Dolomite 
mountains, and westward, across the Adriatic, to 
those of Dalmatia, and cut down trees of oak 
and beech and larch — trees whose wood is hard 
and enduring. Of these they formed piles, 
beams from twelve to eighteen feet long, and 
from ten to twelve inches square, and sharpened 
at one end — sound and solid shafts. These 



THE PALACE 9 

they drove deep down out of sight into the 
mud and sand, where the main or master walls 
of their buildings were to rise. Many piles 
were used for each palace, for, though they did 
not touch each other, they were yet driven 
close together. Thus, in preparing the soil, 
in changing the soil, for the building of the 
Rialto Bridge, twelve thousand piles of oak 
were driven home, and in doing the same for 
the Church of the Madonna della Salute over 
a million and a half were used. And as each 
pile was driven separately, it was a work of 
patient, steady toil ; and yet it was carried on 
cheerfully, for the workmen sang their national 
ballads to the stroke of the hammer — a custom 
that has come down to the present time. By 
this process, in the course of centuries, the 
whole soil of Venice has been changed, and 
rendered stable for the support of its palaces. 

And thus, too, it can be with our poor human 
nature. It can also be changed, and changed 
in like manner. What we have to do is to go 
to the Bible, as the old Venetians went to the 
forests of Cadore and Dalmatia, and there we 
shall find statements of God's love to us, and 
promises of what God is prepared in His love 
to do for us, scattered throughout its pages as 
thickly as trees on the slopes of these highland 



10 VENETIAN SERMONS 

regions. These statements and promises are to 
us what those shafts of wood, what those piles 
were to the Venetians, and we must use them 
as such. We must take the hammer of faith 
and drive them deep down into our hearts. 
We must really accept them, believe them, and 
make them our own. And if we do this, if 
we make them part of ourselves, of our being, 
then the soil of our hearts, like that of Venice, 
will be changed, and we shall obtain a solid 
substratum on which to build characters and 
lives " polished after the similitude of a palace." 
For it is morally impossible to believe that God 
loves us, and so loves us as to have given His 
Son to die for us, and to believe in the incarna- 
tion and in the atoning death of God's Son, and 
to believe the many promises of blessing that 
are given us in Him, and remain uninfluenced, 
unchanged in character and life. No, believing 
in God's love as revealed in Christ, we must 
love Him in return ; and, loving Him, we must 
seek to please Him, and the Spirit of Jesus 
will be given us, according to His own promise, 
to enable us so to do. The old love for sin 
will be displaced, the old subjection to sin will 
be broken, the heart will be changed, renewed, 
regenerated, a new heart will be given us, and 
a right spirit will be put within us. 



THE PALACE 11 

And this reception, this belief, implies labour. 
It is something very different from a general 
acceptance of what is written in the Bible as 
true, something very different from an hereditary 
faith in Christianity, something very different 
from belief in specific doctrine on the strength 
of an external authority. It is belief, realisa- 
tion, acceptance of what is revealed, founded 
on personal knowledge, personal thought, per- 
sonal experience. " Now we believe, not be- 
cause of thy saying : for we have heard him 
ourselves, and know that this is indeed the 
Christ, the Saviour of the world." 

I have often been asked if the piles of 
Venice palaces never rot, and so give way and 
require to be renewed. My answer is, unless 
something very abnormal happens, never. 
Piles driven into the soil seven or eight 
hundred years ago still support in perfect 
solidity and security the old palaces built 
upon them ; and in many cases, during these 
past centuries, palaces have been rebuilt with- 
out their original piles requiring to be re- 
newed. So far, indeed, from decaying, the 
wood, hidden away from light and air and 
change of temperature, becomes really harder 
and harder, stronger and stronger. I have 
some sections of the oaken piles of the 



12 VENETIAN SERMONS 

old Campanile of St. Mark, that fell in 
1902, which were driven in over a thousand 
years ago, and they are as sound and solid 
as the timber of any growing tree. Recently 
in England, some of the piles of old London 
Bridge, and pieces of wood belonging to 
Roman times, were found in a perfectly sound 
condition, hard, indeed, as ebony. 

In like manner the statements and promises 
of God's word never fail the believer. Man's 
word may be as " a bruised reed, on which, 
if a man lean, it will go into his hand and 
pierce it," but not the word of God. All His 
promises are Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus. 
Christ in the heart is evermore realised by the 
Christian to be the Rock of Ages. 

(3) The palace foundations. — Having secured 
solidity of soil, the next step taken by the 
Venetians was to lay down on the top of these 
piles the foundations of their palaces. As 
these foundations would have hard work to do 
— as they would have to resist the stress and 
strain of the constant ebb and flow of the tide, of 
the beating of the waves in days of storm and 
tempest, of exposure to the weather, of the 
ravages of time, as well as do their appointed 
work of holding up and holding together, in 
perfect security, a massive pile of building — 



THE PALACE 13 

they had to be of stone. But there is no stone 
in Venice. So once more the Venetians had to 
go to the mainland, and across the Adriatic to the 
great quarries of I stria to find it, and to bring 
it here in their sailing and rowing boats, at the 
cost of much risk and labour. And the stones 
they brought, as we can see to-day, have 
answered well their purpose. They are large, 
sound, solid, honest blocks of stone. There 
is nothing weak, nothing unreal, about them. 
Sometimes we see the foundation courses of 
buildings covered with plaster, upon which 
dividing lines are scored, so as to make the 
stones appear larger than they are. There is 
nothing of that in Venice foundations. One can 
see at a glance what each block really is, and 
could count how many there are with little diffi- 
culty. Nor have they any carving upon them. 
There is no decoration, no elaborate workman- 
ship, nothing of what is called in architecture 
" rustication." That would have been out of 
keeping with the work they had to do, and 
would have taken away in appearance from 
their solidity. Each stone is simply chiselled 
smooth and square, so as to lie close against 
its neighbour, and thus leave no interstice by 
which water could enter to sap the building. 
It is only in the New Jerusalem, where there is 



14 VENETIAN SERMONS 

no enemy and where there are no storms and 
tempests, that " the foundations of the wall of 
the city were garnished with all manner of 
precious stones/' The blocks thus prepared 
were laid down, evenly and levelly, in regular 
courses above the piles. The first courses 
are buried out of sight in mud and mire ; 
the next succeeding ones are lost in the 
water below the fall of the lowest ebb tide ; 
the next are sometimes in the water and 
sometimes out of it ; the topmost of all rise 
clear into the air and sunshine beyond the 
reach of the highest spring tide. " Levelness, 
evenness, strength, stern endurance," are their 
chief characteristics. They almost answer to 
Mr. Ruskin's description of the foundations 
of nature : " Smooth sheets of rock, glistering 
like sea waves, and that ring under the hammer 
like a brazen bell." 

For the building of characters and lives 
" polished after the similitude of a palace," we, 
too, need foundation stones ; and these must 
be large enough, broad enough, strong enough, 
to resist the assaults of the world, the devil, and 
the flesh ; and to hold up and hold together, 
in harmony and solidity and compactness, the 
fabric of our lives. And for the procuring of 
these we must again go to the Bible, and there 




FOUxNDATION COURSES OF PALAZZO GRIMANI 



To face page 14 



THE PALACE 15 

we shall find them. And what are they ? 
They are the great principles laid down for the 
regulation of our conduct in thought and word 
and action, the principles given in it to guide 
us in our relation to self, the world, and God ; 
the principles, for example, laid down in our 
Lord's discourses, and, above all, manifested in 
His life. The Sermon on the Mount alone 
is a quarry of them. In it we have given 
us principles to guide us in our estimate of 
wherein true blessedness consists — to guide us in 
the exercise of self-restraint, of heart-purity, of 
truthfulness of speech, of forgiveness, of alms- 
giving, of prayer, of fasting, of laying up of 
treasure, of singleness of aim, of freedom from 
anxiety, of judging of others, we have there the 
principle embodied in the golden rule, " There- 
fore all things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them : for 
this is the law and the prophets." It was at 
the close of this discourse that our Saviour said, 
" Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of 
mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto 
a wise man, which built his house upon a 
rock : and the rain descended, and the floods 
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that 
house ; and it fell not : for it was founded upon 
a rock." And then in our Lord's life we have 



16 VENETIAN SERMONS 

all these principles set in a visible form before 
our eyes. He has left us an example that we 
should follow His steps. 

Like the foundation stones of these Venetian 
palaces, these principles for the regulation of 
our conduct are sound, solid, large, easily seen, 
easily understood, and easily applied. They 
are very different from the petty laws, regu- 
lations, and ordinances of a ceremonial age, 
which St. Paul called " weak and beggarly 
elements " — very different from those in later 
ages which gave rise to " cases of conscience " 
which it required spiritual advisers to ad- 
judicate upon. Indeed, Christianity does not 
offer us any system of morality, any code of 
laws at all, but principles of conduct. And 
thus, whilst there are mysteries in the Christian 
faith which the subtilest intellect may not fully 
understand, so far as practical Christian living 
is concerned, the principles laid down in our 
Lord's teaching, and exemplified in His life, can 
be seen and be made use of by the commonest 
understanding. And accepting these principles, 
and using them, we shall find them unmoving 
and unmovable, like the basement courses of 
these palaces, giving to the life which is built 
upon them a unity and solidity, an even- 
ness and straightforwardness, a consistency and 



THE PALACE 17 

endurance, such as nothing else can give. " The 
foundation of the Lord, that will stand." 

One other remark I desire to make before 
going further. These foundations in Venice 
are very much broader than the walls they 
support. It is not often that a new palace is 
erected, but a few years ago one was built — the 
first for some two hundred years — and, as I 
watched the foundations being laid, I was 
surprised at their breadth. They were some 
twelve feet wide. The walls raised upon them 
were broad too, but at their basements, where 
they were widest, they did not cover one 
half that space. The foundations of these 
Venice palaces are twice or thrice as broad as 
the walls they sustain. 

And just so, the principles given us for the 
construction and regulation of our lives are 
very much broader than anything we can build 
upon them — than the actions which are their 
outcome and embodiment. They are broader 
than all creeds and churches. They are broad 
enough to enable all to become noble of heart 
and noble of life, who, though not seeing eye 
to eye with each other in many things — in 
intellectual views of doctrine, in opinions as 
to church ritual and government — yet " love 
the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and in 

B 



18 VENETIAN SERMONS 

truth." They are broad enough to enable all 
who have personal union with Christ, inside 
the pale of any Church or outside the pale of 
all Churches, to raise for themselves characters 
and lives " polished after the similitude of a 
palace." 

(4) The palace walls. — Upon these great 
foundations, laid, as we have seen, upon the 
piles, the Venetians raised their palace walls. 
For the materials of their construction they 
had not to go far. They took what lay to 
their hand in and near their lagoons. All 
the walls of all the palaces in Venice, without 
exception, are built of brick — ordinary clay, 
kneaded and moulded, and baked in the sun 
or in the brick-kiln. No material more com- 
mon, or of less value in itself, could be found 
— no material, in many respects, more frail and 
fragile. But yet these walls of brick have stood 
for centuries, and are standing to-day as securely 
as when first raised by hands long mouldered 
into dust. Even earthquakes that have de- 
stroyed mainland cities, have never seriously 
damaged Venice. In the thirteenth century an 
earthquake, it is said, dried the Grand Canal, yet 
never a house fell. And why was this .? It was 
because these palaces were raised upon these 
great foundations. From them they derive 




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THE PALACE 19 

their strength and sohdity, their unity and 
compactness, their consistency; and endurance. 

And the lives that most of us lead are 
composed of very common materials. Not 
many of us are called upon to fill lofty spheres 
or to perform high and heroic actions — to be 
the deliverers, or leaders, or lawgivers, or poets 
of a nation. Not many of us are called upon 
to direct and uphold society, to stand upon 
the heights of history. And fewer still inherit 
that glory of birth and state that makes them 
sovereigns and princes. The great majority 
of us have to fill humble spheres and do 
humble duties, and to repeat the same humble 
duties day by day, to live and work in hidden 
nooks, like flowers blooming in secluded dells. 
The materials, therefore, of which we have to 
construct our lives are not inaptly symbolised 
by the clay-brick materials of these palace 
walls. They are common duties, of no in- 
trinsic value in themselves. But if our lives 
are the outcome and embodiment of Christian 
principles, if these are the foundation stones 
on which they are built, if we recognise the 
finger of God's providence in the spheres we 
are called upon to fill, if we see guiding us in 
our humble orbits the same hand that guides 
the planets in their courses, if we do the 



20 VENETIAN SERMONS 

duties allotted to us in these spheres, however 
lowly the}^ may be, because God has called 
upon us to do them ; and if we do them as 
service rendered to Him and for His glory ; 
if, whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we 
do, we do all to' the glory of God ; if, whatso- 
ever we do in word or deed, we do all in the 
name of the Lord Jesus Christ — then our lives 
will receive, like the walls of these palaces, 
a strength and solidity, a completeness and 
endurance that nothing can overthrow. Life's 
angriest billows may lash them in all their fury, 
but they will fall back broken and powerless 
like those of ocean lashing a granite clijff. 
Even old age, and death itself, cannot damage 
such a character. Dr. John Ker has said : 
" We have seen the aged Christian, from whose 
memory the very names and faces of his chil- 
dren were blotted out, looking with an un- 
dimmed eye on the face of Christ, weak and 
wandering in all things else, but clear and 
consistent on eternal truths, and dwelling on 
them with the freshness of youthful affection. 
There is surely something sublime in a man 
standing with his feet firm on the unseen rock 
of eternity, when the waves are reaching unto 
his soul, whole and unbroken in his noblest 
nature, and in the shipwreck of all the powers 



THE PALACE 21 

that bind him to time. If men would think, 
it is proof of the divinity of the Gospel and 
of the almighty hand of God, that can put 
something into the heart which cannot be 
shaken when all things else give way." Yes, 
believing in Christ and living in Christ, pos- 
sessing a changed heart through faith in Christ, 
and shaping our lives by inflexible Christian 
principle, we shall be enabled to construct out 
of the commonest materials of common day 
duties — of which God Himself hath need, or 
He would not have made us, and assigned them 
to us as our task — imperishable, indestructible 
characters and lives " polished after the simili- 
tude of a palace." 

(5) The palace ornamentation. — But though 
the walls of these Venetian palaces are of 
brick, they are not lacking in beauty. Some- 
times the bricks themselves are so moulded 
and arranged, so polished and cut, as to 
become objects of beauty. And then there 
is a beauty inherent in the building itself; 
for, as Mr. Ruskin has said, sometimes " the 
best thoughts of their architects are ex- 
pressed in brick." But besides these things 
many elements of beauty have been put into 
these buildings. Some of them, like the 
Ducal Palace and the Ca' d'Oro, are cased 



22 VENETIAN SERMONS 

in marble. The doors and windows of all 
Byzantine palaces are encrusted with the same 
material. Gothic palaces are decorated with 
marble columns and pilasters, and their win- 
dows are often framed in delicately wrought 
dog-tooth and dentil ornament. Balconies, 
with balustrades of slender marble shafts, with 
carved capitals, supported on various richly 
ornamented brackets, run gracefully from 
window to window. The cross, the symbol 
of the Christian faith, was set conspicuously in 
the centre of the facade of every palace, and 
often repeated above or between the windows ; 
in other parts were inserted disks of precious 
marbles — porphyry, serpentine, and verd-antique 
— masses of indestructible, unfading loveliness 
of colour — purple, green, red, yellow ; whilst, 
above all, string-courses of vine leaves often 
festooned the building. The larger spaces of 
brick wall were ornamented with colour in 
chequered patterns and diaper-work, or were 
covered with frescoes by such great artists as 
Giorgione, Titian, andTintoretto. Sharp angles 
were softened away by fluted shafts and cable 
columns, springing with " rooted and ascendant 
strength like that of foliage," from base to 
cornice, whilst upon the cornice itself, the crest 
and crown of the building, special decoration 




MARBLE DISK ORNAMENTATION 

(Palazzo Dario) To face page 22 



THE PALACE 23 

was always bestowed. As Mr. Ruskin has 
said, the Venetian " was content, perforce, to 
gather the clay of the Brenta banks, and 
bake it into brick for the substance of his 
wall, but he overlaid it with the wealth of 
ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. 
You might fancy early Venice one wilder- 
ness of brick, which a petrifying sea had 
beaten upon till it coated it with marble ; at 
first a dark city — washed white by the sea 
foam." 

In like manner, no matter how humble our 
spheres of duty and how commonplace our 
daily duties, into each life there may enter 
elements of beauty. In the first place, there 
is always an inherent dignity and beauty in 
every Christian character in whomsoever found, 
and in every Christian life by whomsoever led, 
just as there is in the general expression of the 
architecture of a Venetian palace, though its 
walls be but of brick ; and in many cases, as in 
the architectural expression of some of these 
palaces, this rises into true nobility and majesty. 
But besides that, God permits us, and desires 
us, to insert into our characters, to hang upon 
the walls of our lives, moral excellences, which, 
like the disks of precious marbles and the 
carved ornaments of the palaces, and like 



U VENETIAN SERMONS 

Aaron's holy garments, shall be " for glory 
and for beauty." To all of us, to the feeblest 
and the humblest, invitations are given for the 
rendering of special services to the Master, for 
the carrying out of some special portions of 
the Divine counsel. Opportunities are con- 
stantly being afforded us to show kindnesses 
to the poor, the sick, the sorrowing ; to per- 
form acts of self-sacrifice for the material and 
spiritual good of others ; to deny ourselves for 
Jesus' sake ; whilst not unfrequently occasions 
are given to us for the doing of heroic actions, 
risking, it may be, health and life in an 
endeavour to save the health and life of a 
fellow-creature. And, just as in these Venetian 
palaces the decoration increases as the building 
ascends, and is, as we have seen, most con- 
spicuous in the cornice, which Mr. Ruskin 
calls, " the close of the wall's life," so it is 
with our palace characters and lives ; for as 
they advance towards completion, as a well- 
spent life draws to its close, God generally 
grants an increase of leisure, of ability, and of 
means, for the performance of actions of moral 
excellence and beauty. 

And this moral beauty is the highest kind 
of beauty. It is more lovely, more precious, 
more enduring than that of the pictures of 



THE PALACE 25 

the old masters that travellers come to Italy 
to admire ; more lovely, more precious, more 
enduring than the beauty of the landscape, 
than that of the noblest conception of the 
thinker, than that of the loftiest flight of 
poetic genius, for it is the beauty of holiness, 
an attribute of God Himself, and that assimi- 
lates us in being to Him. As Dr. Arnold, 
writing from Rieti, in Italy, says : " If I feel 
thrilling through me the sense of this outward 
beauty — innocent, indeed, yet necessarily un- 
conscious — what is the sense one ought to 
have of moral beauty — of God the Holy 
Spirit's creation — of humbleness and truth, 
and self-devotion and love ! Much more 
beautiful, because made truly after God's 
image, are the forms and colours of kind 
and wise and holy thoughts, and words and 
actions ; . . . there is in the moral beauty an 
inherent excellence which the natural beauty 
cannot have ; for the moral beauty is actually, 
so to speak, God, and not merely His work ; 
His living and conscious ministers and servants 
are — it is permitted us to say so — the temples 
of which the light is God Himself." And 
this moral excellence and beauty it is given 
to all to put into their lives. All of us — the 
humblest, the poorest, the obscurest — may 



26 VENETIAN SERMONS 

have characters and lives " polished after the 
similitude of a palace." 

(6) The palace use. — Lastly, these Venetian 
palaces were owned and tenanted by men 
worthy of them. There was a perfect corre- 
spondence between the palace and its occupant. 
The one was worthy of the other. The more 
I study early Venetian history, the more my 
admiration for those who built this city in- 
creases. Who were the early settlers .? They 
were poor fugitives flying before Attila and his 
Huns, the " scourge of God," as he was called, 
who burned their mainland cities of Aquileia, 
of Gradium, of Altinum, and of Padua. They 
came to these lagoons and watery marshes to 
save their lives, " seeking," as Mr. Ruskin 
says, " like Israel of old, a refuge from the 
sword in the paths of the sea." They had 
many and what well might have seemed 
insurmountable difficulties to contend with. 
They had to fight the sea and the elements 
for a foothold. They were cut off from all 
human sympathy and help, and their means 
of livelihood must have been for long scanty 
and precarious. The city was built slowly, 
gradually, as Mr. Ruskin says, " by iron 
hands and patient hearts contending against 
the adversity of nature and the fury of man." 




Alinari Photo 



ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY IN COMMON-PLACE LIFE 

To face page 26 



THE PALACE 27 

But the very struggle they had to engage in 
made them great. It developed intelligence, 
earnestness, resolution, perseverance, endur- 
ance, hope and faith. It contributed to the 
formation of a robust, manly. Christian char- 
acter. Hence an old chronicler says, " La 
quale citade e stada hedificata da veri e honi 
Christiani " (which city was built by true and 
good Christians). From being fugitives they 
became conquerors, conquering nature around 
them, and in their own hearts. From being 
exiles huddled together, uncomfortably and 
insecurely in reed-thatched, rush-floored huts, 
they became princes, lodged regally in palaces. 

And even so it is not for nothing that we 
are called upon to raise for ourselves characters 
and lives " polished after the similitude of a 
palace." It is that we may be becomingly 
occupied and tenanted. It is that each 
believer may be a palace prepared for the 
Master's use. It is that God may be known 
in our palaces for a refuge, that He may 
build His sanctuary within us like high palaces. 
It is that we may be " builded together for an 
habitation of God through the Spirit." It is 
that Christ may come into us, and take up 
His abode with us, that we may be temple- 
palaces of the Holy Ghost. It is that God 



28 VENETIAN SERMONS 

may dwell in us and walk in us, that He 
may be our God, and we His people. 

It is easy — it is natural, perhaps — to live 
otherwise — to build for ourselves houses, without 
piles, without foundations, that have no stability, 
no security, no beauty — buildings that are, to 
quote Mr. Ruskin's language suggested by 
the fall of some houses in Victoria Street, 
Westminster, only too liable to be "washed 
away by the first wave of a summer flood,'' 
having " fungous wall of nocent rottenness, that 
a thunder-shower soaks down with its work- 
men into a heap of slime and death." It is 
easy, it is natural, perhaps, to be content with 
a character and life, morally and intellectually 
fair to look upon, but which is unstable and 
empty because not founded on Christ and 
Christ's words ; for, as Dr. Arnold has said, 
" the spiritual house is empty so long as the 
pearl of great price is not there, although it 
may be hung with all the decorations of earthly 
knowledge." It is possible to hear Christ's 
words and to do them not, and so to be like 
" a foolish man, who built his house upon the 
sand ; and the rain descended, and the floods 
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that 
house ; and it fell: and great was the fall of it." 
" We are persuaded better things of you, and 



THE PALACE 29 

things that accompany salvation, though we 
thus speak." Even for those who have been 
building without foundations on the shifting 
sand there is hope. As Dr. Ker has said : 
" Though you may have lost what you once 
reckoned the good of life, there is another 
and higher good still open to you, not merely 
hereafter but here. God can teach you how 
to build on the ruins of former hopes — nay, 
He can show you how you can take the very 
stones of them that have fallen, and lie scattered 
around, and may joint them into a new and 
more beautiful and enduring structure." " The 
city shall be builded upon its own heap, and 
the palace remain after the manner thereof." 
May God give all of us grace to hear, to 
believe, to obey ; to begin to build, to continue 
building, and to finish — God saying to each 
one of us, what he said to Zerubbabel, " The 
hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation 
of this house ; his hands shall also finish it ; " 
when "he shall bring forth the headstone 
thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace 
unto it." And may God say to each one of 
us, " Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity 
within thy palaces." May all of us have 
characters and lives " polished after the 

SIMILITUDE OF A PALACE." 



II 



THE DOOR 



" Behold, I have set before thee an open door, 
and no man can shut it." — Rev. iii. 8. 



II 

THE DOOR 

" / am the door : by me if any man enter in^ 
he shall he saved^ and shall go in and out^ and 
find pastured —John x. 9. 

In the early centuries of the Christian era, 
when there were no printed books, and when 
manuscripts were the property of the fey^, it 
was customary to make the walls, and even 
the floors of churches teach the people Bible 
knowledge, by covering them with pictures 
illustrative of the main facts of the Christian 
faith, and bearing, the. sacred, text they were 
intended to expound and enforce. For the 
selection of these texts and illustrations, and 
for their arrangement in more or less con- 
spicuous places, according to their relative 
importance, as well as for the teaching of 
this art of Christian Iconography in general, 
a school existed on Mount Athos, the Holy 
Hill of Greece. Quite recently a copy of 
its rules was discovered in one of the manv 

^ c 



34 VENETIAN SERMONS 

hundreds of monasteries scattered over that 
mountain. An examination of these rules 
showed that this text, "I am the door: by 
me if. any man enter in, he shall be saved, 
and shall go in and out, and find pasture," with 
its appropriate illustration, was ordered to be 
put up over the main portal of the church, 
on the outside, so that all entering in might 
see and read it. The selection of such a text, 
for such a position, was a happy one. Indeed, 
no passage of Scripture, fuller of Gospel truth, 
or more appropriate to be set over a church 
door, could be found, for it reminded all, 
as they crossed the threshold of the material 
church, that the true Church of God could 
only be entered by Jesus Christ, "the door 
of the sheep," and that by Him all were invited 
to enter; and that so doing all would find the 
very blessings they required— -salvation and sus- 
tenance, protection and provision ; they would 
be folded and fed as the sheep are under the 
Shepherd's care, they should " be saved and 
find pasture." 

I believe that only in two churches in Europe 
is this text, with its suitable illustration, to be 
seen now ; one of these is St. Sophia's, Con- 
stantinople, and the other is St. Mark's, Venice 
— two churches that in architecture and in their 



THE DOOR 35 

original mosaic decorations very much resemble 
each other. In accordance with the Byzantine 
Iconographic Code this text in the church of 
St. Sophia is placed above the main outer door, 
only, as St. Sophia's is now a Moslem mosque, 
it is barely legible through a coat of whitewash. 
In St. Mark's Church it remains in all its 
original dignity of design and colour, only it 
is not outside, but inside the building. St. 
Mark's Church has two lines of doors, the first 
opening into the atrium and the second into 
the church. Entering by the great central 
portal of the outer line, crossing the atrium, 
where the catechumens were instructed, a flight 
of marble steps leads up to the great central 
bronze door of the church. Passing through 
this into the building itself, we shall see above 
it, on its inner side, this text with a most 
appropriate and significant Byzantine repre- 
sentation, wrought in glass mosaic, and framed 
in marble. In the centre of the picture is 
the Lord Jesus Christ, sitting enthroned, robed 
in royal purple and blue ; behind His head 
there is a golden nimbus with the shadow of 
the cross upon it, and His monogram, begun 
on one side and ending on the other, I-C X-C 
(^lija-ovg X^f(7T09 — Jesus Christ). At Christ's 
right hand is Mary, with a simple circlet of 



36 VENETIAN SERMONS 

gold behind her head, with her monogram, 
M-P e T (MtiT^p GetoO Tiou— Mother of the 
Divine Son), and her hands raised in the 
Byzantine attitude of prayer (the only attitude 
in which she is ever represented in the original 
mosaics of the church) ; and at Christ's left 
hand is St. Mark, in a similar attitude of 
worship, with his name, S. Marcus, and with 
a similar nimbus. Christ thus adored has His 
right hand raised in the act of blessing, whilst 
with His left He holds an open Bible on His 
knee, the outspread pages of which, turned full 
towards the spectator, bear in large letters the 
words : " Ego sum hostium, per me si quis introierit 
sahabitur, et pascua inveniet'' (I am the door, 
and by me if any man enter in he shall be saved 
. . and find pasture). As there was not space 
enough on the two open pages for the whole 
verse, the words " go in and out " are omitted. 
Let us now go over my text clause by clause, 
and may God make our study of it glorifying 
to His name, through our good. 

(i) "/ am the doorT — Like many other 
objects to which our Lord, for the more easy 
comprehension of His hearers, compares Him- 
self, such as the Light, the Vine, the Corn of 
Wheat, and the Water, the one here used 
is a very humble one — a Door. It is one 




JIJ. Bartoluzzi pin.v 



"I AM THE DOOR' 



To face page 36 



THE DOOR 37 

well fitted to remind us of the deep humilia- 
tion to which He stooped for our sakes, 
*' Who, being in the form of God, thought 
it not robbery" (a thing to be grasped at) "to 
be equal with God : but made himself of no 
reputation, and took upon him the form of 
a servant, and was made in the likeness of 
men : and being found in fashion as a man, he 
humbled himself, and became obedient unto 
death, even the death of the cross." And the 
door selected for comparison is the lowliest of 
its kind — a sheep-fold door. In contrast to 
the lofty, wide, ample, ornate portals of palaces 
and mansions, and even of many ordinary 
dwelling-houses, it is low and confined, narrow 
and plain. It reminds us of the '' strait gate " 
of another of our Lord's parables. It is the 
postern, or wicket gate, of John Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's Progress. It thus the better symbol- 
ised Him who was "despised and rejected of 
men," ** who was as a root out of a dry ground, 
without form and comeliness," of whom it 
was said, *' Is not this the carpenter, the son 
of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and 
of Juda, and Simon } and are not his sisters here 
with us .? And they were offended at him." 

And yet the figure is most expressive. For 
the door here figuratively spoken of, however 



38 VENETIAN SERMONS 

humble it may be, commands the fold. No- 
thing can enter the sheep-fold but by the 
door. And its very lowliness, and narrowness, 
and straitness add to its serviceableness and 
importance in that it aids the shepherd in his 
examination of the sheep, insuring that none 
can enter unknown and unrecognised by him. 
And even so no one can enter into the true 
fold unknown to Christ. No one can deceive 
Him. On His part there is perfect knowledge 
of all who are His. " I know my sheep ; " "I 
know them by name." This fact should be a 
comfort to true Christians, and a warning to 
those who are only formal ones. 

The impressiveness of the figure is still 
further enhanced when we realise that our 
Saviour here claims to be not only the door, 
but the only door. He does not say, " I am a 
door," but *' I am the door," for the article in the 
original is very emphatic, implying that there 
is no other door. '' I (alone) am the door 
of the sheep, all that ever came before me 
(usurping my place) are thieves and robbers." 
The lawyers thought that the " key of know- 
ledge " which they possessed would open for 
them the door of the kingdom of heaven ; 
the scribes and Pharisees trusted similarly in 
their legal righteousness and their ceremonial 



THE DOOR 39 

observances ; whilst the common people, as a 
whole, were content to rest in their Abrahamic 
descent, saying, " We have Abraham for our 
father." But our Saviour brushes all these 
confidences aside as refuges of lies, and claims 
by the use of this humble figure of the door to 
stand, solitarily and alone, the Saviour of the 
world. " No man cometh unto the Father but 
by me." " There is no other name given 
under heaven, among men, whereby we must 
be saved." One door to the ark, one door to 
the sheep-fold, one Saviour and Mediator, the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

It is remarkable how this claim was re- 
cognised and confessed by the old Venetians 
in St. Mark's Church. Not content with 
the conspicuous display of it in the words 
and in the pictorial illustration of our text 
above the door, they have re-asserted it on 
the marble arch that frames the mosaic in 
the following lines : — 

" Ego sum janua vita 
Per me mia membra venite^ 

(I am the gate of life, O My members,"enter by 
Me.) Also, on a band of marble that crosses 
the wall above, there is an inscription referring 
to the picture of Christ beneath : " Ciuis fuerit^ 



40 VENETIAN SERMONS 

et quo te^ quo procioque redemit^ et cur tihi fecit, et 
dedit omnia, mente revolve''' (Who He was, and 
for what purpose, and at what price, He re- 
deemed thee, and why He did this for thee, 
and gave thee all things, consider). Further, 
on the keystones of all the arches of the outer 
line of doors of the church the figure of Christ 
is carved. In many churches, both ancient and 
modern, whilst Christ may be set over one 
door, probably the principal one of the build- 
ing, very often Mary is put over a second door, 
and the saint, after whom the church is named, 
over a third. This arrangement is intended to 
teach that though Christ is the Door, the main 
Door, into the fold of the redeemed, yet men 
are helped thitherward by the intercession and 
by the mediation of His mother and of the 
saints. St. Mark's Church is a protest against 
that teaching. In it all the doors are one 
door, and that Door is Christ. With Christ 
the Church stands or falls. The sculptures 
and mosaics of St. Mark's thus singularly em- 
phasise the teaching of the text — Christ the 
Door, the only Door. The spiritual fold of the 
redeemed, like that material sanctuary, cannot 
be entered but by Him. 

Christ's claim to be the Door, the only 
Door, is rendered still more impressive by His 




CHRIST THE KEYSTONE 



To face page 40 



THE DOOR 41 

asserting Himself to be this in His own person, 
"/(personally) am the door." Our Saviour's 
words may be understood almost literally. A 
friend of mine in the East was once looking at 
a sheep-fold in the company of a shepherd. 
After a time he said, " Well, you have shown 
me many things about the fold, but you have 
not shown me the door." The shepherd re- 
plied in the very words of the text, " I am the 
door," and then, pointing to a gap in the fold, 
he explained that at night, when the sheep were 
all in the enclosure, he wrapt himself in his 
blanket and lay down across the gap. He was 
the door. Nothing could enter but by him. 
So Christ in His own person is the Door. 
Christ does not separate Himself from what 
He taught and wrought, as did the founders 
of pagan Religions and Schools, or the Old 
Testament prophets and teachers, none of 
whom made themselves the subjects of their 
teaching and prophecy. They acknowledged 
themselves to be but messengers delivering 
messages, to be but teachers imparting lessons. 
In the Koran there are passages expressly 
calling upon its readers to distinguish be- 
tween Mohammed and Mohammedanism. 
But Christ claims, in contrast to this, to be 
the messenger and the message, the teacher and 



42 VENETIAN SERMONS 

the lesson, the preacher and the sermon, the 
founder of a religion and the religion that 
He founded. Salvation is not a thing that 
Christ bestows upon us apart from Himself. 
He bestows it in union with Himself. We 
obtain it by being joined to Him by the bonds 
of faith and love and service. As has been 
said, " Christianity is Christ." To come to 
the door, is to come to Christ ; to grasp 
the handle of the door, is to grasp the hand 
of Christ ; to enter the door, is to enter 
Christ. 

(2) ^^ By me if any man enter in.'' — Christ 
having declared Himself to be the Door, 
the only Door, next offers Himself as an 
entrance to all. By Christ all may enter 
in. But He does not put it in that way. 
He says, " By me if any man enter in." He 
thus offers Himself to all, by offering Him- 
self to each. In this way there is brought 
before us, in these words, two things — (^) the 
Universality of our Lord's offer of entrance, 
and {F) its Particularity. 

{a) Its Universality. — Christ as the Door offers 
admission to all. The Kings of Babylon and 
Persia are represented in the Book of Daniel 
as issuing their commands and decrees *' to 
all peoples and nations and languages that 



THE DOOR 43 

dwelt in all the earth." But an appeal which, 
on the lips of men of limited knowledge of 
the world and of its inhabitants, savoured of 
pride and folly is full of reality and signifi- 
cance when proceeding from Him who knows 
all men, and in whose *' hands are all the 
corners of the earth." And Christ ojffers 
admission to all, because He loves all, and 
died for all ; because He is the " propitiation 
. . . for the sins of the whole world." And 
He offers admission to all equally, because 
all the distinctions that separate man from 
man — distinctions of race and colour, of 
nationality, of social status and caste — sink 
into insignificance in view of the great fact 
that all men '' have gone astray like lost 
sheep," and that Christ has provided in Him- 
self a remedy for them all. In the light of 
this fact, '' there is neither Greek nor Jew, 
circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, 
Scythian, bond nor free : but Christ is all, 
and in all." False religions are not adapted 
for unlimited extension. Mohammedanism, 
Buddhism, Confucianism, born in the East, 
can never by their very nature take root in 
the West. But the Christian religion is indi- 
genous nowhere ; it can take root and grow 
equally anywhere. It is a universal religion, 



44 VENETIAN SERMONS 

knowing no boundaries of latitude and longi- 
tude, knowing no barriers of race and country, 
but, coming from God the Father of all, it 
is designed and fitted to be for the salvation 
of all. " Go ye unto all the world, and 
preach the Gospel to every creature." All, 
then, enter in by Christ, the Door ; all are 
invited to enter in ; all are commanded to 
enter in, " according to the commandment 
of the everlasting God, made known to all 
nations, for the obedience of faith." 

(^) The Particularity of our Lord's offer of 
entrance. " By me if any man enter in." 
The narrow sheep-fold door prevents, as we 
said, any entering unknown to Christ ; it also 
prevents any entering to whom Christ is 
unknown. "I know my sheep" is one half 
of the truth, " and am known of mine " 
is the other. If on Christ's side there is, 
" I know whom I have chosen," on the 
believer's side there is, " I know in whom I 
have believed." Coming to Christ must be 
personal. Each one in this matter must act 
for himself. Each one must himself come to 
Christ, believe in Christ, lay hold of Christ. 
Each one must personally come to the strait 
gate, to the wicket gate, to the sheep-fold 
door, and be admitted. We are told in the 



THE DOOR 45 

parable that the sheep hear the shepherd's 
voice, and know his voice ; and so likewise 
each one must hear the voice and know the 
voice of Jesus. As Christ is Himself the 
Door, it is impossible to come to it, and 
enter it, without knowing Him. 

This individual coming to Christ, this per- 
sonal finding the strait gate, the sheep-fold 
door, and entering it, implies individual exer- 
tion and labour and self-denial. One cannot 
find it by sitting still. One cannot find it by 
deputy. Though one may point another to 
it, and urge him to start in its quest, and may 
even accompany him thither all the way, still 
each one must enter it for himself. And that 
sometimes strenuous effort is required for this 
is implied in our Saviour's words, " Strive 
(agonize) to enter in at the strait gate." 
Intellect, will, heart, thought, resolve, affec- 
tion, are all brought into action in coming to 
Christ. 

But none sincerely seeking the Door can 
miss it. The land-doors of the great palaces 
of Venice are generally small, and placed at 
the ends of long, narrow, tortuous alleys, and 
they would be difficult to find but that there 
are hung out over them great \a,nterns, fana/i, 
that flood them with light. When Christian 



46 VENETIAN SERMONS 

asked Evangelist the way to the Celestial City, 
Evangelist, pointing over a very wide field, 
said, " Do you see yonder wicket gate ? " 
Christian answered, " No." Then asked Evan- 
gelist, " Do you see yonder shining light ? " 
Christian said, " I think I do." " Then," said 
Evangelist, *' keep that light in your eye, and 
go up directly thereto, so shalt thou see the 
gate." In the same way, God has hung up 
over the strait gate, the sheep-fold Door, the 
lamp of Scripture which gleams out into the 
darkness of the night, so that men who have 
strayed like lost sheep in the wilderness of the 
world may see the light from afar, and, guid- 
ing their footsteps by it, may find the Door, 
and, finding the Door, may find Christ, of 
whom all Scripture testifies, the great Shep- 
herd and Bishop of their souls. 

(3) ''^ He shall be saved ^ and shall go in 
and out ^ and find pasture T — A door serves two 
purposes — entrance and exit; and a sheep- 
fold door gives ingress to the fold and egress 
to the fields ; thus guaranteeing for the sheep, 
in the one case, {a) Safety^ and in the other, 
(^) Sustenance. 

And these are the blessings those receive 
who enter Christ, the Door; for '' by me if any 
man enter in he shall be saved^ and shall go in 



THE DOOR 47 

and out, and find pastured The believer in 
Christ obtains safety and subsistence, secu- 
rity and sustenance ; and in the possession of 
these blessings he obtains all he really needs, 
a saved life and a sustained life ; since '* in 
him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily,'' and he is " complete in him.'' 

((«) In Christ the Believer obtains Safety. — *' He 
shall be saved." We need to be saved. The 
fact of sin existing is patent to all, felt by all, 
confessed by all. Sin is a fact in our lives, and 
in the lives of others. There is, as has been 
said, " a baseness in the blood," a moral malady 
that is foreign to our nature, of which we are 
ashamed. And sin means peril, punishment, 
lostness, death. "Sin when it is finished bringeth 
forth death." " The wages of sin is death." 
On this point Canon Liddon has said : " The 
sternest things that have ever been said, as 
regards sin's prospects in another world, first 
passed the tenderest lips that ever proclaimed 
God's love to man." It is Christ who speaks 
of the undying worm, and of the unquenchable 
fire. As sinners we need forgiveness, we need 
to be saved from sin's punishment. And this 
is what Christ does for us. This is one half 
of the salvation He brings us. When the 
Christian pilgrim, footsore and weary with the 



48 VENETIAN SERMONS 

length of the way and the load of sin on his 
back, knocked at the wicket gate and was 
admitted, and came up to the cross — when he, 
"in other words, came to Christ, "his burden 
loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from 
off his back, and began to tumble, and so 
continued to do, till it came to the mouth 
of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and he saw 
it no more." As of old, so still, the very 
first words Christ speaks to the sin-oppressed 
one coming to Him, are, " Son, daughter, be 
of good cheer ; thy sins are forgiven thee." 
" There is no condemnation for them who are 
in Christ Jesus." And we need to be saved 
from sin's power. Sin has by nature dominion 
over us. Subjection to evil is a stern fact 
confessed by Jew and Gentile alike. Horace 
said, " I see and approve of the better course, 
I follow the worse;" and St. Paul said, "The 
good that I would I do not : but the evil which 
I would not, that I do. O wretched man that 
I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of 
this death ? I thank God through Jesus Christ 
our Lord." St. Paul thanked God for deliver- 
ance from sin's dominion, which he obtained 
in Christ. And this is the second half of the 
salvation Christ brings us. He " breaks the 
power of cancelled sin." He supplants love 



THE DOOR 49 

to sin by love to Himself, so that the danger 
of moral ruin by actual transgression is averted. 
In Christ there is protection from those evil 
influences and temptations which, inherent in 
our own constitution, and assailing us from 
without, endanger peace of mind and life. 
And no matter how many and how fierce 
our enemies may be, in Christ we occupy 
such a position of security that we are de- 
livered from their fear, and we are inspired 
with confidence. As the sheep within the fold 
are protected from the thief and the spoiler, 
the lion and the wolf, so the believer in Christ 
is protected from him in whom all evil is 
summed up, Satan, which " as a roaring lion 
walketh about, seeking whom he may devour " : 
and from " wolves in sheep's clothing," those 
"grievous wolves " that *' enter in among you, 
not sparing the flock." Where the shepherd 
in his own person is the door of the fold, he 
has to be vanquished before the sheep can be 
reached ; and so in the case of the believer, 
Christ, the Door, has to be overcome before 
he can be touched. Therefore the Christian's 
confidence is that of St. Paul, " And the Lord 
shall deliver me from every evil work, and will 
preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom." In 
Christ there is safety, security, and salvation. 

D 



50 VENETIAN SERMONS 

(^) In Christ the believer obtains Sustenance. — 
*' He shall go in and out, and find pasture." 
The sheep-fold is not a prison. The sheep do 
not enter it to remain there, but rather that, 
having found in it needed refuge and repose, they 
may come forth again to the green valleys and 
hill-sides, and find pasture. Giving ingress to 
the fold, the door also gives egress to the fields. 
But when the sheep go out, it is always under 
the protection and the guidance of the shep- 
herd. He is thus the door of the sheep, as 
well as the door of the fold. 

And in like manner he who enters by Christ 
into the fold does not enter into a prison — nay, 
rather, he enters into liberty, " the glorious 
liberty of the children of God," that " liberty 
wherewith Christ makes his people free." The 
very refuge and repose the believer receives in 
the fold is given him that he may pass out, 
refreshed and restored, under the guidance of 
Christ, into a life of activity in the fields ; and 
find pasture, find sustenance. Into what fields .? 
Into all the old, it may be, well-known fields 
provided by the Divine bounty for our sus- 
tenance and pleasure — the fields of Nature, of 
Society, of Business, of Providence, of Science, 
of History, of Revelation. Christianity does 
not narrow, does not restrict, the range of our 




CHRIST THE ONE DOOR 



To face page 50 



THE DOOR 51 

affections, of our interests, and faculties. The 
very opposite : it broadens and widens them. 
But all these fields change their aspect to the 
man who is in contact with Christ. They wear 
for him a richer green and a fairer aspect, and 
are bathed in sweeter sunshine. For him, " old 
things have passed away, and all things have 
become new ; " and all the new things afford 
him spiritual nourishment. 

He sees now the true glory of the realms of 
Nature, for he sees everywhere the handiwork 
of Him, " by whom all things were made," and 
" in whom all things consist." His mind and 
heart, his soul and spirit, are warmed and 
fed, as he sees around him the manifestations 
of his Saviour's wisdom, power, goodness, 
love, beauty, and purpose. For the Christian's 
nourishment and support Christ turns the very 
" wilderness " into " a standing water," and the 
" dry ground into water springs." For his 
refreshment and delight the barren waste is 
transformed into a garden, " the garden of the 
Lord," and the " desert rejoices and blossoms as 
the rose." Christ, the Lord of nature, glorifies 
and interprets His words and His workings to 
the Christian for his sustenance. 

" O world as God has made it, all is beauty, 
And knowiDg this is love, and love is duty.'* 



52 VENETIAN SERMONS 

As the Christian views the course of God's 
Providential dealings with him, he receives sus- 
tenance. For he no longer " stretcheth out his 
hand against God, and strengtheneth himself 
against the Almighty "... running " upon 
the thick bosses of his bucklers," but he realises 
how God in Christ is ordering all things for 
him in infinite wisdom and in boundless love ; 
and that even though he may be able neither to 
sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet, as it is 
his Heavenly Father who feeds the fowls of the 
air and clothes the grass of the field, so shall 
he be fed and clothed, his bread shall be given 
him, and his water shall be made sure. And as 
he performs day by day his daily task, from a 
high motive and with a high purpose, even 
that he might, like his Saviour, glorify God 
on the earth and finish the work given him to 
do, fresh pastures open out before him. 

Likewise in the field of Science the Christian 
also gathers nourishing fruits. Mr. Ruskin has 
said : " Men may easily starve in their own 
granaries — men of science, perhaps, most of all, 
for they are likely to seek accumulation of their 
store rather than nourishment from it." And 
Sir William Dawson speaks of scientists, " who, 
having found a law, think that thereby they 
have got quit of a lawgiver." But unlike 



THE DOOR 53 

such men the scientist, in Christ, sees physical 
laws to be but the expression of Divine Will ; 
and of every secret which nature yields up to 
his patient research, he can say, " This also 
cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which 
is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in 
working." 

From the realm of History the believer can 
also gather a rich harvest, for he knows who 
it is who " sitteth upon the circle of the earth," 
and who has " divided to the nations their 
inheritance," and who " doeth according to his 
will in the army of heaven, and among the 
inhabitants of the earth." As he studies the 
annals of his own country and of other lands, 
he sees how national progress or decline has 
followed the doing or the transgression of 
Christ's word and will, who judges the world 
in righteousness, and ministers judgment to 
the people in uprightness. He sees how 
" righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is 
a reproach to any people." The events and 
incidents of history are to him manifestations 
of Christ's will. " We have heard with our 
ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what 
work thou didst in their days, in the times 
of old." " Whatsoever things were written 
aforetime, were written for our learning." 



54 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Lastly, as the Christian explores, day by day, 
the fields of Holy Scripture, as he reads day 
by day his daily portion, and inwardly digests 
it, his mind is enlightened, his heart is sanc- 
tified, his better nature, his whole nature, is 
fed and nourished, as he realises how true his 
Saviour's words are, " Man doth not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
out of the mouth of God." In every page of 
the Bible the believer finds that which does his 
soul good ; for throughout it all he finds Him 
of whom it testifies, Jesus Christ, whom he 
feels to be to his soul the Bread and the Water 
of Life. 

Thus, in Christ, the believer passes into all 
the departments of life and action, traverses 
all the fields and realms of God's universe, and 
gathers spiritual sustenance ; he " goes in and 
out, and finds pasture." 

The question for us is. Do we know Christ 
as the Door ^ Have we personal, individual 
fellowship with Him ? Have we entered by 
Christ, the Door.? And are we rejoicing in 
the safety and sustenance He daily gives 
us ? Or are our feet still stumbling on the 
dark mountains, and are we still starving in 
the wilderness like lost sheep, far from the 
Shepherd's tender care .? Let such come to 



THE DOOR 55 

Christ. Behold He cries, " I am the door : 
by me if any man enter in he shall be saved, 
and go in and out, and find pasture." Behold, 
"I set before you an open door, and no man 
can shut it." No man can ; but He who 
opens it can^ and one day will shut it ; hence 
His urgent call to us to enter without delay. 
" Strive to enter in at the strait gate ; for many, 
I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall 
not be able, when once the Master of the 
house is risen up, and hath shut to the 
door." " Behold, now is the accepted time ; 
behold, now is the day of salvation." " I am 
THE door: and by me if any man enter 

IN, HE SHALL BE SAVED, AND SHALL GO IN 
AND OUT, AND FIND PASTURE." 



Ill 

ST. MARK 



"And when he (Peter) had considered the 
thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother 
of John, whose surname was Mark ; where many 
were gathered together praying." — Acts xii. 12. 




A'aj'a Photo 



ST. MARK WRITING fllS GOSPEL 



To face page 5& 



Ill 

ST. MARK 

" John^ whose surname was Mark^ 

— Acts xii. 25. 

Thomas Carlyle, in his Life of John Sterling, 

remarks that " a true delineation of the smallest 

man, and of his scene of pilgrimage through 

life, is capable of interesting the greatest 

man ; that all men are to an unspeakable 

degree brothers — each man's life a strange 

emblem of every man's ; and that Human 

Portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures 

the welcomest on human walls." If that is 

so, then the life of St. Mark, one of the four 

biographers of our Lord, about whom we can 

learn not a little from history, sacred and 

profane, and from well-authenticated tradition, 

and whose characteristic Gospel is the oldest we 

possess, both as to contents and composition, 

ought to have for us a special interest. And this 

interest is enhanced for us by this day and this 

place. For this, the 25th of April, is^the day 

59 



60 VENETIAN SERMONS 

called in the Christian calendar by his name — St. 
Mark's Day, when the mind of Christendom is 
very .generally directed to the Evangelist. And 
we are met together in Venice, a city more than 
any other in the world identified with him, and 
which was the old capital of a State peculiarly 
his own. His name, indeed, in centuries gone 
by, was synonymous with that of the Venetian 
Republic. It was to the battle-cry of " Marco ! 
Marco ! " that the Venetians faced and fought 
and vanquished many a foe on sea and land. 
It was in his name that they won the com- 
mercial sea-board of the world, and it was in 
his name that they wisely and humanely ruled 
it. Averse as the Venetians were from receiv- 
ing or bestowing decorations, yet they created 
one order of merit, that of Cavaliere di San 
Marco. And what St. Mark was for a thousand 
years he is to-day, the patron saint of the city. 
Its chief square and church, the finest of 
their kind in the world, are called by his 
name, la Piazza di San Marco ^ la Basilica di 
San Marco. This latter was built to receive 
his body, and it bears the chief facts of his 
life in mosaic outside on its fa9ade, under the 
porches of its doors, and inside in its organ- 
loft, and in the Zeno Chapel ; whilst his Gospel 
is emblazoned in gold and colour on its walls 




THE WINGED LION AT PORTAL OF THE DOGE'S PALACE 

To face page to- 



ST. MARK 61 

and domes. His emblem, the Winged Lion, 
with the Gospel in its paw, is displayed through- 
out the city before the public gaze. As if 
guardian of the Queen of the Adriatic, it 
stands looking towards the sea from the 
broad capital of one of the Piazzetta columns. 
It shines out in bold relief in gold, against a 
background of blue, under the feet of the 
Saviour, on the apex of St. Mark's Church. 
It calls on all to redeem the time as its 
flight is noted on the old clock-tower of the 
Piazza. It keeps watch at the portal of the 
Ducal Palace. It unfurls its broad wings on 
the silken banners of the Old Republic as 
they float on the breeze from the standards 
on the terrace of the church, and from 
the tall masts in front of it in the Piazza 
below. As it used to be stamped on all 
articles made of the precious metals, and on 
the silver and gold coins of the Republic, 
and on its official parchments, in order to 
guarantee their genuineness, so it is the official 
stamp and seal of the city's documents to- 
day. 

Finding ourselves thus on St. Mark's day 
in St. Mark's city, it will surely be our own 
fault if our conception of the character and life 
of the Evangelist, and of the lessons they are 



62 VENETIAN SERMONS 

fitted to teach us, be not more vividly and 
more permanently imprinted on our minds 
than would be possible at other times, and in 
other places. 

(i) The Life of St. Mark. — From Acts 
xii. 12, we learn that St. Mark's home was in 
Jerusalem, that his mother's name was Mary, 
and that his own name originally was not 
Mark but John, just as that of Matthew 
was Levi, of Paul was Saul, of Peter was 
Simon, and of Barnabas was Joses. And as 
a change of name always corresponds with 
a crisis in life, and as in this case the 
name laid aside, John, was Jewish, and the 
name assumed or bestowed upon him, Mark 
(Marcus), was Roman, it is probable that the 
change marked his conversion from Judaism 
to Christianity, or his devoting himself to 
the propagation of his new faith amongst the 
Gentiles. 

His mother seems to have been a convert of 
the Apostle Peter, and a woman of some wealth 
and social standing in Jerusalem, for her home 
was " a church in the house," and a refuge for 
the Apostles in the early days of persecution ; 
for it was to it that St. Peter went after his 
deliverance by the hand of the angel from 
prison, " where," we are told, '' many were 



ST. MARK 63 

gathered together praying." Probably St. Mark 
was himself a convert of the Apostle Peter, for 
he calls him in the first of his epistles, *' Marcus 
my son." This phrase, however, has been 
understood by some to express not a spiritual, 
but a natural relationship — that St. Peter was 
St. Mark's father. I think that is not tenable, 
although, at the same time, it may be noted 
that, in love of the present, in a practical way 
of looking at things, in a warmth of nature, in 
a hasty zeal, and in a conspicuous failure of 
faith on trying occasions, they had much in 
common. 

It is not probable that St. Mark ever knew, 
or even saw, the Lord Jesus. I am aware that 
Epiphanius, and Procopius the deacon, count St. 
Mark among those of whom we read in John 
vi. 66^ "who went back and walked no more 
with him" (Christ), after His "hard saying" 
concerning Himself as " the bread of life," and 
as giving His " flesh for the life of the world " ; 
and I am also aware that he has been identified 
by some with the " young man " who was with 
Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, who left 
his garment in the soldiers' hands, and fled for 
his life. But the distinct testimony of the 
early Fathers is against such suppositions. John 
the Elder, who lived in the apostolic age, is 



64 VENETIAN SERMONS 

reported, on the testimony of Papias, who was 
Bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, at the begin- 
ning of the second century, to have said, " He 
neither heard the Lord, nor followed Him." 
His rather was that blessedness which our 
Lord emphasised when resolving the doubts 
of Thomas — a blessing that has been the 
heritage of millions, and that may be ours 
to-day — the blessedness of not seeing with 
the eye of sense, but with the eye of faith. 
" Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 
have believed." 

In the Epistle to the Colossians, St. Paul 
calls St. Mark *' sister's son to Barnabas," but 
in the Revised Version this is correctly changed 
to " the cousin of Barnabas," and as Barnabas 
was a " Levite of Cyprus," some have thought 
that St. Mark was also a native of Cyprus and 
of priestly descent. 

In his public life we find him associated 
(i) with St. Barnabas and St. Paul, and then 
(2) with St. Peter. 

(i) He is first mentioned in connection with 
his kinsman, St, Barnabas, and with St. Paul, 
when they were at Jerusalem on a mission of 
charity from the Christians at Antioch. We 
read in Acts xii. 25, " When they had fulfilled 
their ministry," they returned to Antioch from 



ST. MARK 65 

Jerusalem, " and took with them John, whose 
surname v/as Mark." This happened about 
A.D. 44. 

(2) He is next mentioned as accompanying 
St. Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary 
journey, as their "minister" (Acts xiii. 5). 
The word translated " minister " means liter- 
ally a rower, a servant on board a ship, or a 
soldier's attendant, and in general an inferior 
worker. What St. Mark's inferior duties were 
we cannot with certainty know, but it is not 
probable that they were all of a menial kind. 
He most likely administered the rite of Bap- 
tism, and perhaps also the Lord's Supper ; 
for, in the early Church, it was the ministry 
of the Word, the preaching of the Gospel, 
that the Apostles and Evangelists recognised 
as their life's work. *' It is not reason that 
we should leave the word of God and serve 
tables," was said on one occasion by the twelve 
Apostles ; " Christ sent me not to baptize, but 
to preach the Gospel," was the emphatic utter- 
ance of St. Paul. And in these days, when the 
Sacraments are by some unduly exalted, almost 
into the category of charms, and are made 
essential to salvation, we ought to remember 
that our Lord discourages the notion that 
material elements are the necessary channels 

E 



66 VENETIAN SERMONS 

of spiritual blessings, in such words as these, 
" The words which I speak unto you, they 
are spirit, and they are life ; " and that, as a 
matter of history, the more a man advances 
in the Divine life, the more he outgrows 
ordinances. 

On their first missionary journey, St. Paul, 
St. Barnabas, and St. Mark started from Antioch 
for the fortified seaport of Seleucia. Thence 
they took ship to Cyprus, preaching the word 
of God in the synagogues of the Jews at two 
towns in that island, Salamis and Paphos. 
From Cyprus they sailed to Pamphylia, in 
Asia Minor, and went on to Perga, where 
*'John," that is, St. Mark, ''departing from 
them," made his way back to the sea-coast 
at Attalia, whence he sailed to Antioch, and 
thence returned to Jerusalem. His courage 
failed him, and little wonder that it did, when 
he realised the nature of the country Paul and 
Barnabas were about to traverse. It is to the 
hardships suffered in that region that St. Paul 
refers in the eleventh chapter of his Second 
Epistle to the Corinthians, where he speaks 
of being " in journeyings often " — he had to 
travel long distances on foot along rough 
roads ; "in perils of rivers " — he had to ford 
wild bridgeless mountain torrents; "in perils 



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ST. MARK 67 

of robbers '' — the mountains were the haunts 
of brigands ; " in perils from my countrymen " 
— as at Iconium, where, we read, " the un- 
believing Jews stirred up the Gentiles," and 
" there was an assault made both of the Gen- 
tiles, and also of the Jews with their rulers, 
to use them despitefully, and to stone them," 
which threats were carried out at Lystra, the 
evangelists' next stopping place, whither their 
persecutors followed them. Such sufferings 
and dangers might well daunt the as yet 
timid mind of St. Mark. 

(3) By-and-by St. Paul and St. Barnabas, 
having completed their missionary tour in 
Asia Minor, in which they often " hazarded 
their lives " for the name of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, returned likewise to Antioch and Jeru- 
salem, and, having " rehearsed all that God had 
done with them, and how he had opened the 
door of faith unto the Gentiles," they were 
ready to start again. St. Mark was present 
on this occasion, and heard the story of their 
missionary adventures, part of which he had 
shared, and he offered to go with them. He had 
failed once, but now he felt confident that he 
would not do so a second time. St. Barnabas 
was anxious to take him, but, we read, St. 
Paul opposed it — "Paul thought it not good 



68 VENETIAN SERMONS 

to take him with them who departed from 
them from Pamphylia and went not with 
them to the work." St. Barnabas, however, 
was " determined to take him." And then, 
we read, " the contention was so sharp be- 
tween them that they separated the one from 
the other, and so Barnabas took Mark and 
sailed unto Cyprus," his native place. 

(4) Strange enough, the next time he is 
mentioned we read of him as being with St. 
Paul in Rome, so he must have regained 
the Apostle's confidence and esteem ; for in 
his Epistle to the Colossians, written from 
Rome, he says, " Aristarchus, my fellow- 
prisoner, saluteth you, and Marcus, the cousin 
of Barnabas . . . These only are my fellow- 
workers unto the kingdom of God, which 
have been a comfort unto me." 

(5) St. Mark, however, for some reason, left 
St. Paul, and went to Colossae in Phrygia, and 
St. Paul again wrote to the Colossians about 
him, " touching whom ye received command- 
ments ; if he come unto you, receive him." 

(6) The closing incident of the connection 
of St. Paul and St. Mark is a touching one. 
We read of it in the last chapter of the Second 
Epistle to Timothy. St. Paul was almost alone 
in his old age in Rome, and his martyrdom 



ST. MARK 69 

was staring him in the face. Demas, Crescens, 
and Titus, he tells us, had left him ; " only 
Luke is with me." Therefore he wrote to 
Timothy : " Do thy diligence to come shortly 
unto me," and " take Mark, and bring him 
with thee, for he is profitable to me for the 
ministry." Apparently, however, St. Mark and 
St. Paul never met again. 

(7) The next time we read of St. Mark 
he was with St. Peter at Babylon, in Assyria. 
Some, however, have maintained that by 
Babylon in this case is meant Rome. But 
there is no real foundation for such a belief. 
Babylon, in Assyria, was at that time a great 
seat of Jewish culture, and we find St. Peter 
writing to the " strangers scattered abroad," to 
whom his epistles are addressed, " The Church 
that is at Babylon, elected together with you, 
saluteth you, and so doth Marcus my son." 

(8) For the closing scenes of St. Mark's 
life we have to fall back upon tradition, 
which, though having no canonical authority, 
had an early and widespread ecclesiastical 
sanction. He is supposed, whilst with St. 
Peter, to have acted as his interpreter, secre- 
tary, or amanuensis ; and to have settled 
ultimately at Alexandria in Egypt, where he 
became its first Bishop. In that position he 



70 VENETIAN SERMONS 

is said to have gained the friendship of 
Philo, the Jewish philosopher and Greek 
scholar, and to have written the Gospel 
which bears his name, embodying in it the 
substance of St. Peter's oral teaching. It is, 
as I have said, the oldest of the synoptic 
Gospels, written, probably, after the deaths 
of St. Peter and St. Paul, but before St. 
Matthew and St. Luke had put pen to 
parchment. Bishop Westcott, in his Intro- 
duction to the Study of the Gospels^ gives this 
account of the compilation of the Gospel 
from the pen of Papias, to whom I have 
already had occasion to refer : " This also 
the Elder " (John, the authority of Papias) 
" used to say, Mark having become Peter's 
interpreter, wrote accurately all that he re- 
membered, or that he (Peter) mentioned : 
though he did not record in order that 
which was either said or done by Christ, for 
he neither heard the Lord, nor followed 
Him, but subsequently, as I said, attached 
himself to Peter, who used to frame his 
teaching to meet the wants of his hearers, 
but not as making a connective narrative of 
the Lord's discourses. So Mark committed 
no error, as he wrote down some particulars 
just as he recalled them to mind or as he 



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To face page 70 



ST. MARK 71 

(Peter) narrated them. For he took heed 
to one thing, to omit none of the facts 
that he heard, and to make no false state- 
ment in his account of them.'' With these 
statements agree the words of Irenaeus, who 
wrote some fifty years later : " After the 
decease of these (Peter and Paul), Mark, the 
disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself also 
has handed down to us in writing the things 
which were preached by Peter." Similar testi- 
mony is borne by Clement of Alexandria, 
by Origen, by Tertullian, and by Eusebius. 
Clement of Alexandria says (I use Bishop 
Westcott's translation) : '' When St. Peter had 
publicly preached the Gospel in Rome, and 
declared the Gospel by inspiration, those who 
were present, being many, urged St. Mark, 
as one who had followed him from a distant 
time and remembered what he said, to record 
what he stated ; and that he, having made 
his Gospel, gave it to those who made the 
request of him ; and that Peter, when he was 
aware of this, took pains neither to hinder 
him nor to encourage him in his work." 
Origen says, " Mark made the Gospel as 
Peter guided him." Tertullian says, " The 
Gospel of Mark is maintained to be Peter's, 
whose interpreter he was ; " whilst Eusebius 



72 VENETIAN SERMONS 

tells us that St. Peter " sanctioned the writing 
of Mark for the use of the Church." 

I have mentioned the Zeno Chapel, in St. 
Mark's Church, as containing mosaics of the 
Evangelist, and some of these embody the 
testimony of the writers above quoted. In 
one section St. Mark is represented sitting at 
a low square table, writing his Gospel, the 
open page showing the words Initium Evangelii. 
The disciples who are said to have urged him 
to undertake the work look on, and the legend 
of the picture is " Sanctus Marcus rogatus a fra- 
trihus scripsit Evangelium!' In another mosaic, 
St. Mark, accompanied by these same disciples, 
is seen submitting his Gospel to the inspection 
of St. Peter, who, according to the legend 
inscribed above it, approves of it, and hands 
it over to be read in the Church — '^Sanctus 
Petrus approbat Evangelium Sancti Marci^ et 
tradit Ecclesia legendumr 

We now come to the tradition that is con- 
cerned more especially with St. Mark's connec- 
tion with Venice. When Bishop of Alexandria 
he used to go on evangelistic journeys accom- 
panied by his minister, St. Hermagoras. One 
of these was northward round the coast of 
Dalmatia to Aquileia at the head of the 
Adriatic Sea — Roma Secunda, as it was called, 



ST. MARK 73 

from having been a favourite resort of the 
Roman emperors and nobility. Some of the 
mosaics in the Zeno Chapel, and in the organ- 
loft of St. Mark's Church, represent St. Mark 
preaching and baptizing in that city ; and to 
this day there are legends in Aquileia and in 
other places along that coast regarding him, 
for his work was most successful. The Church 
at Aquileia became one of much influence, and 
it furnished to the Apostles' Creed the clause, 
" He descended into hell." Tradition then 
says that, on leaving Aquileia, St. Mark's boat 
was carried by a storm, amongst the lagoons of 
Venice, and grounded on an island where now 
stands the Church of San Francesco della Vigna. 
As he lay stranded in his boat, waiting for the 
rising tide to float it off^, an angel appeared 
to him, who told him not to fear, for that 
there a great city would one day arise to his 
honour, where he would have many converts. 
In the Zeno Chapel there is a mosaic which 
shows St. Mark receiving this vision, as he lies 
asleep in his boat, which is tied to a stake 
amongst the reeds of the island ; and the 
legend, which is always inscribed on the open 
page of his Gospel in the paw of his symbol, 
the Winged Lion, is the first part of the angel's 
message : " Pax tihi^ Marce, Evangelista mens " 



74 VENETIAN SERMONS 

(Peace to thee, O Mark, My Evangelist). 
Mr. Ruskin, in his Stones of Venice^ quotes a 
tradition which makes the evangelising work 
of St. Mark at Aquileia and these Venetian 
islands precede his going to Egypt, so that 
he " was thus in some sort the first Bishop 
of the Venetian Isles and people." In any 
case, we may say that he added this region 
to his episcopal see. 

According to Jerome, St. Mark died at 
Alexandria, and tradition says he died a 
martyr's death, sealing his testimony, as, we 
believe, did most of the Apostles, with his 
blood. His martyrdom is depicted both in 
the Zeno Chapel and in St. Mark's organ- 
loft. These mosaics show him in the act of 
celebrating the Holy Communion, when a 
man steals up and strikes him with a club. 
Another man is shown throwing a noose round 
his neck and strangling him. His dead body 
is afterwards dragged through the streets of 
the city. Another mosaic shows the disciples 
taking up his body, and putting it in a sarco- 
phagus. Afterwards this was placed in a church 
built to his memory and called by his name. 

What we have further to say concerns 
chiefly his body, and here we leave tradition 
and touch history. In 421 — that is some four 



ST. MARK 75 

hundred years after St. Mark visited these 
Venetian shores — Attila and his Huns burned 
the mainland cities of Aquileia, Heracleia, Gra- 
dium, Altinum, and other places where he had 
evangelised ; and the inhabitants, the descend- 
ants of his converts, fled for dear life to these 
lagoons, and, with the inhabitants of Padua, 
founded the city of Venice ; whereby the first 
half of the prophecy made by the angel to 
the Evangelist was fulfilled, which said, " Here 
a great city shall arise." Then four more 
centuries passed away, when the second part 
of the prophecy was fulfilled; for in 829 the 
body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria 
to Venice, and it was then that the famous 
historic connection between the Saint and the 
city began — the Church of St. Mark was built 
to receive his body ; the city was dedicated to 
his honour, thus supplanting St. Theodore as its 
patron saint ; his symbol of the Winged Lion 
became the arms of the city, and the national 
standard ; and his name became for ever linked 
with the fortunes of the great Republic. 
Thus was dedicated " to his honour " that 
" glorious city in the sea," which 

^'' Rose^ like an exhalation from the deep, 
A vast metropolis, zvith glistering spires^ 



76 VENETIAN SERMONS 

With theatres^ basilicas adorned ; 

A scene of light and glory ^ a dominion^ 

That has endured the longest among menT 

The story of the obtaining of the body and 
of the bringing it to Venice is admirably told 
in mosaic in St. Mark's Church. It is as 
follows : — Two Venetian sea captains, Buono 
of Malamocco, and Rustico of Torcello, 
happened to be in the port of Alexandria 
with their ships, when they saw with indig- 
nation the Saracens, by order of the Caliph, 
destroying Christian churches, and especially 
that of St. Mark, in order that a palace might 
be built for him of their most precious marbles 
{ipiu scelti marmi). Accordingly they thought 
the moment opportune for obtaining posses- 
sion of the Evangelist's body. By the help 
of its custodian, Stauratius, a monk, and that 
of Theodorus, a priest, the sarcophagus was 
opened and the body taken out. The diffi- 
culty of getting it through the customs, and 
on board one of the ships, without detection 
was accomplished by stowing it away at the 
bottom of a basket, and heaping on the top 
of it Kanzir (swine's flesh), which caused the 
Mohammedan officials to turn away from the 
examination of the basket in disgust. Other 



ST. MARK 77 

mosaics show the safe arrival of the ships at 
Venice with their precious freight, and its 
reception by the Doge, priests, and people. 

" Pontifices^ Clerus^ Populus^ Dux mente serenus^ 
Laudibus atque choris, excipiunt duke canoris^ 

The priest and custodian who favoured the 
enterprise came also to Venice, and their 
names, with those of the two captains, are 
inscribed with honour on the mosaics and 
also in the archives of the church. Indeed 
Stauratius, the priest, became its first primicerio^ 
or Dean. 

The body of St. Mark was first deposited 
in a tower of the original Ducal Palace, where 
it remained three years, from 829 to 832, 
when it was removed to the first St. Mark's 
Church, completed that latter year to receive 
it. The tower is still standing, having been 
utilised to form part of the treasury of the 
present church, doubtless because of its con- 
nection with St. Mark. When this earliest 
church was burned in 976, the body was lost, 
and only recovered in 1094. It was then 
deposited in the crypt of the present church. 
This crypt, or rather the mausoleum in it, 
which contained St. Mark's body, was called 
la confessione (the confession), not because it was 



78 VENETIAN SERMONS 

a place where confessions were made, but be- 
cause it contained the remains of a martyr, 
of one who had " witnessed a good confession." 
In this place it remained till 1811 — that is, for 
the long period of 717 years — when it was 
taken up into the church, as, at high tide, 
the crypt was frequently full of water. Before 
placing it under the high altar of the church, 
where it now is, the sarcophagus was opened 
by order of the Italian Government, and in 
the presence of its representatives. It enclosed 
a coffin of wood, which was found to contain 
the chief parts of a human skeleton, a box of 
balsam, some coins, and a plate stating, " In 
the year of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, 
1094, in the 8th day of the current month, 
October, in the reign of the Doge Vital Falier, 
this mausoleum was made." On the inner 
side of the stone corner of the sarcophagus 
were the letters, rudely cut, S. MA. 

In the treasury of St. Mark's Church one 
of the first things that strikes the eye is a tall, 
narrow, gracefully-formed chair, cut out of a 
single block of Cipoline marble, and bearing 
symbolic sculptures of the Evangelists, and of 
the four rivers of Paradise, now become the 
four streams of the Gospel narrative. It is 
called the Chair of St. Mark, and is said to 



ST. MARK 79 

have been used by him when he was Bishop 
of Alexandria. There is also preserved in 
this treasury a fragment of manuscript long 
spoken of as part of the Latin original of St. 
Mark's Gospel, and as bearing his signature. 
But it is beyond question that St. Mark wrote 
his Gospel in Greek, not in Latin, and it is 
equally certain that this fragment is but part 
of a fifth or sixth century copy of Jerome's 
Vulgate, the rest of which is preserved in the 
little mountain town of Cividale in Fruili, to 
the north of Venice, and at Prague. Some of 
the best pictures of the great Venetian masters, 
such as Titian and Tintoretto, are illustrative 
of the historic and legendary life of the Evan- 
gelist ; and many of the old legendary tales 
of Venetians, such as that of the Fisherman 
and the Ring, are concerned with his inter- 
position, in times of difficulty and danger, on 
behalf of the city and the republic. 

II. The Lessons of St. Mark's Life. — 
( I ) The Evangelist St. Mark is a splendid example 
of one who ''''out of weakness became strong^ His 
failure on his first missionary journey, though 
not unnatural, was very severely blamed in 
the early Church, so that Chrysostom calls 
him in the Philosophumena^ KoXo^oSaKruXog^ 
which means literally " maimed finger." This 



80 VENETIAN SERMONS 

was a term applied to cowards, as such were 
accustomed to maim their fingers to prevent 
themselves from being called up for military 
service. The word " poltroon," from the Latin, 
police truncus^ means literally and figuratively 
the same thing. And some have therefore 
expressed surprise (and Mr. Ruskin, strange 
to say, is amongst the number) that the Lion, 
the bravest of animals, should have been chosen 
to represent him. As I shall have occasion 
to show afterwards, the Lion symbolises not 
Mark himself, but Christ as represented in 
his Gospel. But apart from that, as we have 
seen from our study of St. Mark's life, if he 
failed at first, he afterwards gathered courage 
and strength. St. Paul reinstated him in his 
confidence, and speaks of him in terms of 
affection and commendation in not less than 
three of his Epistles — in that to the Colossians, 
the second to Timothy, and in that to Phile- 
mon, calling him his "fellow-worker unto the 
kingdom of God," and his "fellow-labourer," 
and testifying that he had been a comfort 
unto him and profitable to him in the ministry, 
for which reasons he begged Timothy to bring 
him to Rome that he might be with him in 
his labours and sufferings. He accompanied 
the Apostle Peter to Babylon, in Assyria, and 



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ST. MARK 81 

laboured with him there, and afterwards was 
with him in Alexandria. He preserved the 
Apostle Peter's oral teaching in the invaluable 
Gospel that bears his name. He voyaged up 
the Dalmatian coast to Aquileia, and visited 
these lagoons, evangelising everywhere. And 
at last, if we credit tradition, he sealed his 
testimony with his blood. He is not unworthy 
to be represented even by the Lion. 

" Once like a broken bow Mark sprang aside : 
Till grace recalled him to a worthier course, 
To feeble hands and knees increasing force, 
Till God was magnified. 

And now a strong evangelist, St. Mark 
Hath for his sign a Lion in his strength ; 
And thro' the stormy water's breadth and length 
He helps to steer God's ark." 

I have sometimes thought that St. Mark, 
in this lesson of his life, out of weakness be- 
coming strong, very appropriately prefigured 
the Venetians, with whom he has been so 
intimately united. He was their prototype. 
They too, *' out of weakness, became strong." 
When they came to settle in these lagoons 
they were poor fugitives flying before their 
enemies, who had driven them from their 
mainland homes, to which, burned and in 

F 



82 VENETIAN SERMONS 

ashes, they could never return. They were 
weak, but they became strong. The very 
hardships and struggles they had to endure 
ennobled them. They conquered nature. 
They found the soil of Venice shifting mud 
and sand, but a little way raised above the 
flowing tide, and fitted but to bear the 
weight of wooden huts. They changed it 
into stable ground, on which, as on a basis 
of rock, they raised their marble palaces, the 
beauty and the endurance of which are the 
admiration of the world. Conquering nature 
under their feet, they conquered it in their 
own hearts. They took the Bible as their 
charter, writing it in the words of a universal 
language, that of colour and design, on the 
walls of St. Mark's Church, and writing it 
also on the fleshy tablets of their hearts. 
From being weak fugitives, they became con- 
querors, and heroes, and princes in the earth. 

So also it may be with us. By God's grace, 
and a willing mind, our natural weaknesses 
may become our strong points. Where we 
have shown ourselves weak, we may show 
ourselves strong. If we have met unfore- 
seen and unexpected difficulties in our setting 
out on our Christian pilgrimage — Sloughs of 
Despond to cross, and Hills of Difficulty to 



ST. MARK 83 

climb, and Vanity Fairs and Valleys of Humi- 
liation to pass through — and if we have been 
tempted to turn back, as St. Mark did on his 
first missionary journey, let us take heart and 
persevere, believing that we shall be strength- 
ened for danger and difficulty, and strengthened 
by danger and difficulty. If we are conscious 
of any weak point in the fortifications of the 
Town of Mansoul, be it at Ear-gate, Eye-gate, 
Mouth-gate, Nose-gate, or Feel-gate, let us 
set a double watch at that point. The history 
of Venice affiDrds not a few examples of men 
who so recovered themselves as to rise from 
a prison step by step to a throne. Michele 
Steno, who in 1355 was imprisoned for bad con- 
duct, was in 1400 elected Doge, and Antonio 
Grimani, who in 1499 was put in prison for 
losing a sea-fight, was in 1521 chosen Doge. 

Discomfiture for the Christian does not 
mean defeat. Like the tribe of Gad, he 
may be overcome, but he shall overcome at 
the last. He can buy back the opportunity, 
recover lost ground, and win victories on the 
very fields where he had suffered defeat. And 
let us remember that every effort of the will 
put forth to resist temptation will strengthen 
the will, and make it stronger to resist the 
same temptation the next time it assails us. 



84 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Every blow struck in the spiritual battle we 
are waging will strengthen the arm for future 
combat. And let us never forget that the 
Christian life is a battle, a struggle, a long 
and a fierce campaign against the world, the 
devil, and the flesh, and that the promise is 
not to those who have never become faint- 
hearted, who have never been defeated, who 
have never fallen, but to those who, though 
defeated, are never vanquished, and who at 
last overcome by the blood of the Lamb : 
" he that endureth to the end shall be 
saved." 

(2) Sl Mark was a splendid example of one 
whose " last works were more than the firsts — 
In the Book of Revelation it is said of the 
Church at Thyatira, " I know thy works, and 
charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, 
and thy works ; and the last to be more 
than the first." Thyatira was not a perfect 
Church, was not a faultless Church, but it was 
a progressing Church. As time went on, as 
years passed away, the Christians of Thyatira 
became more diligent, more faithful, more de- 
voted, more energetic in the Master's service. 
So was it with St. Mark. He failed at 
first, he accomplished little at first, but after- 
wards he worked diligently and successfully, 



ST. MARK 85 

and accomplished great things. At first, 
as we have seen, he was the servant of St. 
Paul, performing inferior duties, and then 
he was his colleague, and companion, and a 
comfort to him in his ministry. Later he 
was St. Peter's amanuensis. He became an 
evangelist, and a missionary himself, and the 
first Bishop of Alexandria and of the Venetian 
lagoons. Greatest honour of all, he became 
our Lord's biographer, giving to the Church 
and the world his characteristic Gospel. His 
name and influence are indissolubly associated 
with the most stable and the most enduring 
Republic the world has as yet seen. And 
now, through the translation of his Gospel into 
many languages, and by its circulation in many 
lands, his work for Christ is more manifold 
and more effective than before. Truly his 
last works were more than his first. 

Let us ask ourselves. Is it so with us ^ Are 
we progressing in the Christian life ^ Does our 
present compare favourably with our past ^ 
Are we growing in devotion to Christ, and 
in works for Him ? As trees, planted by the 
rivers of water, are we bringing forth fruits 
of righteousness in ever-increasing abundance ? 
It is not always so. Sometimes there is a 
standing still. Sometimes there is a going 



86 VENETIAN SERMONS 

backward. The tendency in nature is to go 
back to the wild original. The charge against 
the Church at Ephesus was that its love to 
Christ had decreased in intensity and in fervour. 
The charge against the Church at Laodicea was 
that it had become lukewarm — " neither cold 
nor hot." The charge against the Church at 
Sardis was that it had a name to live and was 
dead. There is thus a tendency to retrograde, 
to backslide, as well as a tendency to advance 
and progress. The one is the tendency of 
nature, the other is the tendency of grace. 
The one is carnal, the other is spiritual. The 
one is earthly, the other is heavenly. 

Frederick Robertson, speaking of God's work 
in creation, says : " God proceeded from the 
less perfect to the more perfect — first inorganic 
life, after that the vegetable, then the animal, 
and then by degrees man, made in the image 
of his Creator. But not only were the more 
perfect forms of life created last, but more 
work was done at the close than at the begin- 
ning of the creative period. We are told that 
God did almost nothing on the second day, 
except the separation of the waters which were 
above from the waters which were below the 
earth, but on the sixth all the animals were 
created, and man, the top and crown of all 



ST. MARK Si 

things." " We find the same principle," he 
says, " in all that God does. And it is true 
of every work that will stand the test of time. 
And the lesson we learn is that the man who 
is not advancing is directly reversing the order 
of. God." God means us ever to advance. 
He means our last works to be both more 
numerous and more important than our first 
ones. He makes the possibility of this the 
reward of faithful service. If we use faithfully 
one talent. He will add to it ten talents more. 
If we have ruled well one city, ten cities will 
be given us to rule over. The more we do, 
the more we can do, and the better will be our 
work. Let us see that we are following the 
Divine law of accelerated progress, and not the 
natural law of accelerated retrogression. Let 
us see that, like St. Mark, our last works are 
more numerous and better than our first. 

(3) Lastly^ the secret of St. Mark's progress 
in character and life was his union with Christ. 
— Very early in the Christian Church divisions 
and separations amongst its members took 
place. The Apostle Paul wrote thus to the 
Corinthians : " Now this I say, that every one 
of you saith, I am of Paul ; and I of Apollos ; 
and I of Cephas ; and I of Christ." Some, 
looking too exclusively at the leading doctrine 



88 VENETIAN SERMONS 

of St. Paul's teaching, that of justification by 
faith, called themselves by his name ; others, 
regarding similarly the Judaising tendencies of 
St. Peter, became his followers ; whilst a third 
party, clinging to the philosophical teaching 
of the Alexandrian school, said, " We are of 
Apollos." Now, it is remarkable that St. Mark 
had a connection with all these three leaders. 
He was St. Paul's valued fellow- worker, he 
was St. Peter's amanuensis, and he imbibed the 
teaching of Apollos. His Gospel was the out- 
come of St. Peter's teaching, yet it was written 
in Greek for the Gentile converts at Rome, 
whilst he himself was Bishop of Alexandria. 
He combined the excellences of all for his 
enrichment of mind, whilst identifying himself 
exclusively with none, but only with Christ 
— realising that in Christ all things were his, 
" whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the 
world, or life, or death, or things present, or 
things to come." 

Glorying thus not in man, but in Christ, his 
mind dwelt particularly on the strength of 
Christ. There is a tendency to admire in 
another what one lacks himself; St. Mark 
therefore, lacking naturally to a certain extent 
strength of character, admired the strength of 
Christ— thought of it, wrote of it, desired it. 




CHAIR OF ST. MARK 



To face page 



•^ cf 



ST. MARK 89 

and never ceased to pursue it. This appears 
from the nature of his Gospel. In it Christ is 
represented as the strong man armed, the Lion 
of the tribe of Judah. St. Mark gives us but 
little of what Christ said. He omits almost 
all His parables and discourses. He omits the 
Sermon on the Mount. There are but four 
short parables in the whole book. He passes 
over Christ's infancy entirely. But he exhibits 
Christ; in the strength of His manhood as the 
miracle worker. He relates nearly all the 
miracles that are recorded by Matthew and 
Luke, adding many new particulars to them ; 
and he relates some that these evangelists pass 
over — as, for example, the cure of the man 
by the Sea of Galilee, who was deaf and had 
an impediment in his speech, and the cure of 
the blind man at Bethsaida. St. Mark de- 
velops the character and the mission of Christ 
in deeds, acts, works, rather than in words. 
He sets forth the active ministry of Christ — 
His power over man, over nature, over evil 
spirits. And it is because of his doing this 
that He is represented by the lion. This 
symbol stands for Christ as set forth in St. 
Mark's Gospel. Because He is there set forth 
to be the Lion of the tribe of Judah, therefore 
His symbol is the Lion. 



90 VENETIAN SERMONS 

It is true, however, that this symbol does also 
represent St. Mark himself, though only in a 
secondary and subordinate sense. For St. 
Mark became like his ideal. As he dwelt 
on Christ's strength he became strong. Repre- 
senting Christ as the Lion, he himself became 
lion-hearted. 

And in like manner, if we are to conquer 
cowardice and weakness — if we are to conquer 
our natural faults and failings, and become 
eminent in works of courage and of faith, it is 
from Christ that we must draw our inspiration 
and our strength. We may draw these to a 
limited extent from St. Mark, as did the 
Venetians. Not seldom, for example, when, 
taken by surprise or overpowered by numbers, 
they were losing ground in the battle, did their 
leader, rushing into the thickest of the fight with 
the cry, " He that loves St. Mark follow me," 
turn defeat into victory. Drawing animation 
thus from St. Mark, we may draw it also from 
all good men whose characters and lives we 
allow to influence us ; but it is necessary to go 
at all times beyond them to the Source whence 
they drew it — to Christ Himself. Indeed the 
mission of St. Mark and of all Christians is 
to point to Him. It is His greatness they 
show forth. It is His strength that is made 



ST. MARK 91 

perfect in their weakness. It is through Christ 
alone, therefore, that we can conquer. We 
read in the Book of the Revelation that the 
Saints overcame by the blood of the Lamb. If 
we go, then, to Christ with all our doubts and 
fears, with all our faults and failings, with all 
our poverty and weakness, He will enrich and 
strengthen us, and fill us out of His own 
inexhaustible fulness, making His strength 
sufficient for us, perfecting His strength in 
our weakness, causing us to advance and pro- 
gress towards the measure of the stature of 
the fulness of the perfect man in Him. He 
will cause us to abound in every good work. 
He will enable us to make our last works more 
than our first. 

*' Animate our souls by the example 
of all those who, having fought a good 
fight here below, in the power of the 
same faith, are now safe and rest till 
the day of Christ's coming." 



IV 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 



" To him that overcometh will I give ... a 
white stone, and in the stone a new name written, 
which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth 
it." — Rev. ii. 17. 




'\%lviati riioio 



JUDGiMENT OF SOLOMON (see page 112) 



To face page 94 



IV 
STONES OF MEMORIAL 

" What mean ye by these stones ? " 

— Joshua iv. 6. 

It is remarkable how frequently stones are 
spoken of in Scripture as being used as monu- 
ments and memorials of important historic 
events, and as signs and symbols of the great 
moral and spiritual lessons which these events 
were fitted to teach. They were visible helps 
to memory. By means of them the historic 
fact and its lesson were permanently recorded, 
and their remembrance kept alive from gene- 
ration to generation. Thus we read that Jacob, 
at Bethel, took the stone that had served as his 
pillow, and set it up as a pillar in remembrance 
of the vision he had received of the ladder 
reaching from earth to heaven, and of the 
assurance God gave him of His presence and 
help. So at Mizpah, on the Mount of Gilead, 
Jacob and Laban his father-in-law, made an 
heap of stones in the form of a pillar, as a 

95 



96 VENETIAN SERMONS 

witness of the covenant they had made between 
them. Likewise at Shechem, Joshua, when, 
just before his death, he bound the people by 
a covenant to serve God only, " took a great 
stone, and set it up there under an oak that 
was by the sanctuary of the Lord," as a 
stone of witness. Again, in remembrance of 
the victory the children of Israel obtained at 
Mizpeh, because *' the Lord thundered with a 
great thunder on that day upon the Philistines 
and discomfited them . . . Samuel took a stone, 
and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called 
the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath 
the Lord helped us." In like manner in the 
narrative, from which my text is taken, of the 
miraculous passing of the children of Israel 
across the river Jordan dry-shod, the waters 
from above standing up as an heap, and the 
waters below failing and being cut off, Joshua, 
instructed by God, commanded twelve men, out 
of every tribe a man, to take up a stone on his 
shoulder out of the midst of Jordan, where the 
priests' feet stood firm, and to carry it to 
Gilgal, where they were to lodge that night. 
This having been done, we read, " those twelve 
stones, which they took out of Jordan, did 
Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake unto the 
children of Israel, saying. When your children 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 97 

shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, 
What mean ye by these stones ? Then ye shall 
answer them, Israel came over this Jordan on 
dry land, and these stones shall be a memorial 
unto the children of Israel for ever." Thus 
these stones had a message for each particular 
tribe, and for the nation as a whole, reminding 
them of God's marvellous kindness in miracu- 
lously leading them through the deep waters, 
and planting them in the land of promise. 

The custom of erecting memorial stones, so 
prevalent amongst the children of Israel, was 
prevalent also amongst the old Venetians. In 
various parts of the dominions of the Republic 
such stones are to be seen, but more especially 
in Venice. Here they meet the eye at every 
turn. Many of them are monuments and 
memorials of great historic events, and exhibit 
the spirit and temper of a great people, and 
are fitted to teach useful lessons both to the 
stronger resident in this city, and to the 
traveller passing through it. Indeed, stones 
of all kinds in Venice have a significance that 
they do not possess in other cities ; for Venice 
is not a city of stone, it is a city of brick. I 
think people are apt to forget this fact. Per- 
haps the title that Mr. Ruskin has given to 
his invaluable books on Venice, The Stones of 

G 



98 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Venice^ tends a little to mislead us on this 
point. In Venice there is not one stone build- 
ing. All its churches, all its palaces, all its 
dwelling-houses are of brick. Their founda- 
tions are of stone, the walls are more or less 
faced and ornamented with stone, but the 
whole body of every building is of brick. 
St. Mark's Church is of brick, though it is 
encrusted outside and inside with precious 
marbles. The walls of the Doges' Palace are 
of brick, encased with a coating of red and 
white marbles cut into the form of large bricks. 

Thus, when stones were used in Venice, they 
were used for special reasons, to serve special 
purposes, and to teach special lessons. Let us 
now ask, in regard to the more conspicuous of 
them, the question of the text, " What mean 
ye by these stones } " 

(i) Stones of Christian faith and life. — In 
different parts of the city there are set into 
the front of palaces, stones, beautifully cut and 
carved, in the form of Byzantine crosses ; and 
others, called pater^^ some round and some 
oblong, with birds and animals sculptured 
upon them, the bird generally standing on the 
back of the animal, and pecking at it. These 
exist in different positions and combinations. 
Generally the cross is set above the apex of the 




< 

p 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 99 

principal Gothic windows, and the -patera 
between them, but sometimes these positions 
are reversed. A good example of these crosses 
and patera is to be seen on a house, partly 
Byzantine and partly Gothic, in Campo Mater 
Domini, near the Rialto, one of the oldest and 
most interesting smaller squares of the city. 
This house has four crosses, one above the 
pointed arch of each of its central windows, 
and nine patera set between and above these 
crosses. An old Gothic house in this same 
campo, with chequered front, has a patera 
above each window. The beautiful little 
Byzantine palace. La Madonnetta, on the Grand 
Canal, one of the few examples of that early 
architecture remaining in the city, has a paterae 
over each of its eight windows, and in the 
centre above all a cross in relief on a diamond- 
shaped slab of red marble. The Palazzo 
Vetturi, in Campo S. Maria Formosa, has the 
same arrangement oi patera^ and single crosses, 
over its eight Gothic windows. The old Ca' 
Da Mosta, on the Grand Canal, just above the 
Rialto Bridge, which was the house of Alvise 
Da Mosta, one of the fifteenth century dis- 
coverers of India ; and the house of the Doge 
Marin Falier, who was beheaded for treason 
in 1355, which is situated at the bridge of 



100 VENETIAN SERMONS 

SS. Apostoli, are decorated with many pater^e^ 
and other Byzantine Christian symbols, such 
as that of peacocks drinking out of a fountain, 
by which is signified eternal life. 

The tympanums of Gothic doorways are 

very generally filled with Stones of Christian 

Faith and Life. These stones bear above the 

shield of the family a figure of the " Angel 

of His Presence" — that is, Jesus Christ; and 

below, supporting the shield, two attendant 

angels. Christ's right hand is usually raised 

in blessing, and in His left He holds a globe 

of the world, with a cross upon it. Mr. 

Ruskin calls this arrangement " the general 

theory of an old Venetian doorway." These 

stones are very numerous in every quarter of 

the city. They exist, for example, over the 

doorways of the following houses : — Palazzo 

Trevisan, in Campo San Maurizio ; Ca' Po- 

polin, in Campo Santa Margherita ; a house 

in Calle Renier, which runs off that campo ; a 

house in Rio Terra Seconda, Sant' Agostin ; a 

house at Ponte del Forner, Fondamenta Pesero; 

a palace in Calle delT Arco ; a house at Ponte 

del Cavallo, near the Campo of SS. Giovanni 

and Paolo ; on the arch that spans the entrance 

to the Corte del Verier, which runs out of 

that campo ; and on a castellated gateway that 



V ^fiV 4iX. 4^v -sV ♦.V A^ ♦V *v. «, ^ V •i^ 4»V^ ^ 




PEACOCKiS— SYMBOL OF REGENERATED LIFE 



To face page loo 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 101 

gives entrance to Corte delle Muneghe, near 
the Church of the Madonna dei Miracoli. 
The house at Ponte del Forner has, besides 
" The Angel of His Presence " over the door, 
the symbols of the four Evangelists, the Eagle, 
the Lion, the Man, and the Ox, placed in the 
spaces between the arches of its five central 
Gothic windows. Their wings are extended 
so that they touch each other, and each holds 
up to view his open Gospel. 

What, let us ask, is the meaning of these 
stones ? They witness to the Christian faith 
and life of those who built, and owned, and 
tenanted these palaces. By the cross they 
declared that their faith was in Jesus Christ, 
and Him crucified. Like the Apostle Paul, 
they said that they gloried in the cross of 
Christ. His death of atonement for their sins 
was the keystone of their creed. And by the 
paterae they declared that they were living a 
Christian life — that, as the bird, the creature 
of the pure ethereal region of the sky above, 
was struggling to overcome the animal, whose 
dwelling-place was in holes and caves of the 
polluted earth beneath, so their spiritual nature 
was battling daily to obtain the mastery over 
their animal nature — so the new man, created 
in righteousness and true holiness within them. 



102 VENETIAN SERMONS 

was striving to conquer the old man, which 
was corrupt. And by the " Angel of His 
Presence," they declared Christ to be the 
Saviour of the whole world by His death on 
the cross, and they declared their personal de- 
pendence on His presence and blessing to enable 
them to be Christian in character and life. 

Whether the Venetians were true to the 
declaration of Christian Faith and Life which 
they thus made by these stones inserted in the 
brick walls of their palaces, we cannot tell. I 
believe, however, that very generally they were, 
and that this explains to a large extent their 
greatness as individuals and as a nation. In 
any case, the stone declaration shows what they 
esteemed to be the true faith and the true 
life. And in this they were right. Only faith 
in Christ, and in Christ crucified, is saving faith. 
Only when a man realises that Christ loved him 
and that Christ died for him, does he become a 
new man in character and life, and is able to 
say, with the Apostle Paul, *' and the life I now 
live in the flesh " (so different from the life I 
once lived), " I live by the faith of the Son of 
God, who loved me and gave himself for me." 
And that life is a struggle. Indeed, the main 
difference between a Christian and a worldling is 
often just this : That the one is fighting against 




o 

Oh 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 103 

temptation, the other is yielding to it ; the one 
is battling against the stream, the other is going 
with it ; the one is fighting the good fight of 
faith, the other is enjoying the pleasures of sin 
for a season. 

(2) Stones of Scripture. — Moses, in his 
exhortation to the children of Israel to 
remember God's word, and to observe His 
commandments, says (Deut. vi. 9), "And 
thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy 
house, and on thy gates." This precept the 
Venetians used to observe, and hence we find 
passages of Scripture carved on the lintels and 
gateways of their palaces. As one, therefore, 
came up to a palace door, and knocked and 
waited, his eye could not but rest on some 
good and wholesome words, which were fitted 
to influence his mind and temper, and perhaps 
lead him to obey the further exhortation of 
Moses, " And thou shalt teach them diligently 
unto thy children, and shalt talk of them 
when thou sittest in thine house, and when 
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest 
down, and when thou risest up." 

Many of these Stones of Scripture have dis- 
appeared, as have disappeared many Stones of 
Christian Faith and Life^ but the following are 
amongst those still remaining. 



104 VENETIAN SERMONS 

One of the first palaces one sees on arriving 
at Venice is the Palazzo Vendramin, not far 
from the railway station on the Grand Canal. 
On the broad facade of the building are deeply 
cut in large letters the words, " Non nobis 
Domine, non nobis^^ being the opening words 
of Psalm cxv., "Not unto us, O Lord, not 
unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for 
thy mercy and for thy truth's sake." On 
a house in Calle del Manganer, behind the 
Church of the SS. Apostoli, are the words 
above the door, " Laudate Deo omnes gentes^' 
being taken from the first verse of Psalm cxvii., 
" O praise the Lord all ye nations, praise him 
all ye people," words quoted also by St. Paul 
in his Epistle to the Romans, xv. ii, "Praise 
the Lord all ye Gentiles ; and laud him, all ye 
people." Another Scriptural stone above the 
door of a small house in Calle degli Eremiti, 
at S. Trovaso, bears the passage from Romans 
viii. 31, " aS/ Deus fro nobis quis contra nos^' 
" If God be for us who can be against us } " ; 
and another near it has these from i Chron. 
xvi. 28, and Psalm xcvi. 7, ^^ Afferte Domino 
gloriam et imperium^' " Give unto the Lord 
glory and strength." In Mr. Ruskin's day 
a house attached to Casa Barbarigo, on the 
Grand Canal, had the words " Benedictus qui 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 105 

venil in nomine Domini^'' " Blessed is he that 
Cometh \n the name of the Lord," Psalm 
cxviii. 26, Matt. xxi. 9. A very sad, but very 
appropriate. Scripture stone was inserted in the 
wall of the Rio di S. Pietro in 1821, twenty- 
five years after the fall of the Republic : 
" Humiliatum est in lahoribus cor eorum^' being 
part of verse 12th of Psalm cvii., "Therefore 
he brought down their heart with labour ; 
they fell down, and there was none to help." 
Sometimes the words express the sense of 
passages from the Scriptures, without being 
hteral transcriptions. Thus, on a gateway 
in Calle Rota, at the Accademia^ and on a 
house in Corte Rota, behind St. Mark's 
Church, there are inserted the words : " Soli 
Deo laus^ honor ^ et gloria " (To God alone be 
praise, honour, and glory), which are taken in 
substance from the doxologies of Rev. iv. 11, 
and V. 12, 13. The same inscription is carved 
on the lintel of a palace door in the Piscina 
S. Zulian. Above the door of a house in Calle 
Lunga, S. Barnaba, are the words : " Domine 
conserva nos in pace^^ "O Lord, preserve us in 
peace." Over the gateway that gives entrance 
to the Palazzo Contarini Porta di Ferro, Salaz- 
zada S. Guistina, is an extremely beautiful and 
significant stone, with the words of our Lord 



106 VENETIAN SERMONS 

taken from St. Luke x. 5, " Pax huic domui,'' 
" Peace be to this house." This blessing is 
carved on a scroll which Christ Himself is re- 
presented unrolling and holding open across His 
breast. On either side of Him are the shields 
of the family, above His head is a patera, and 
over that, on the keystone of an encircling 
Byzantine scroll, is the Blessing Hand. This 
doorhead thus is both a Stone of Scripture and a 
Stone of Christian Faith and Life. " Laus Deo " 
is on a house in Calle di Mezzo, San Gregorio, 
and is also to be seen on other houses. A 
striking inscription, deeply carved in large 
letters, on the inner side of the parapet of 
the great Campanile of St. Mark's Church, 
which fell on the morning of July 14, 1902, 
and which was also inscribed on the bell of 
the Church of the Servites (Fra Paolo Sarpi's), 
was the following : " Chris tus Rex venit in pace. 
Deus homo f actus est'' (Christ, the King, came 
in peace. God was made man). 

To the question, " What mean ye by these 
stones .^ " we answer, that they tell us that the 
Venetians prized the Scriptures, and knew their 
contents. Long before the age of printing, 
they wrote them in gold and colour, in im- 
perishable materials — glass and stone mosaic 
tesserae on the walls and domes of St. Mark's 



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1— I w 

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^ o 



STONES OF MEMORIAL lOT 

Church, making the church a great illumi- 
nated Bible. Then, when printing was intro- 
duced into Venice in 1469, the very first book 
printed, with the exception of one small re- 
ligious tractate, was the Bible. Two years 
later, in 1471, two more complete editions of 
the Bible, in Italian, were published, and from 
that year to the close of the century, ten dif- 
ferent houses printed Bibles, so that a fresh 
edition of it appeared almost every year. In 
the sixteenth century, sixty-three editions of 
the complete Bible were produced, in ItaHan, 
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, and in all 
the languages spoken in Venice and in its 
colonies. 

Mr. Ruskin tells us that when in the fifties 
he was staying with Mrs. McDonald of Cross- 
mount, in the Highlands of Scotland, he was 
strolling in the village one wet day, and was 
driven by the rain to take shelter in a cottage. 
Round the room, into which he was shown, 
were hung a print of the Crucifixion, and some 
of Old Testament subjects. He looked at 
the books on the table, well-used all of them, 
and found three Bibles, three prayer books, 
a treatise on Practical Christianity^ another on 
Seriousness in Religion^ and Baxter's Sainfs Rest. 
Mr. Ruskin asked the cottager, if they read 



108 VENETIAN SERMONS 

no books but religious ones ? The emphatic 
answer he received was, " No, sir; and I should 
be very sorry if there were any others in my 
house." Venice had many other books besides 
the Bible, but it was for many centuries her 
chief book, and it is interwoven with her 
noblest history. We read in the old chronicles 
that Carlo Zeno, the great Admiral of the 
Venetian Fleet in the fourteenth century, knew 
the Psalms by heart, and that the leaders of 
thought all studied the Bible. We also find 
that the Doges frequently made use of Scrip- 
ture language in their public addresses. 

Other nations besides the Venetians were 
accustomed to write passages of Scripture on 
the posts of their houses and on their gates, 
and some are still to be seen in the oldest parts 
of some English and Scottish towns (I have 
seen them on many houses in the old town of 
Edinburgh), but the custom has long since 
been given up. Perhaps that of itself matters 
little, provided we are careful to write them 
on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. And yet 
we might, perhaps, do well to act on Mr. 
Ruskin's suggestion, and inquire " whether 
that strong reluctance to utter a definite re- 
ligious profession, which so many of us feel, 
and which, not very carefully examining into 



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p^ 








^ 



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^^^ 
P 









rf 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 109 

its dim nature, we conclude to be modesty, 
or fear of hypocrisy, or other such form of 
amiableness, be not in very deed neither less nor 
more than infidelity ; whether Peter's ' I know 
not the man ' be not the sum and substance 
of all these misgivings and hesitations ; and 
whether the shamefacedness which we attribute 
to sincerity and reverence, be not such shame- 
facedness as may at last put us among those 
of whom the Son of Man shall be ashamed." 
Let us lay to heart the words of Canon Liddon, 
" in which," Mr. Gladstone says, " he has de- 
scribed so far as man may describe it, the 
ineffable and unapproachable position held by 
the sacred volume." His words, which occur 
in a sermon entitled The Worth of the Old 
Testament^ preached in St. PauFs Cathedral 
in 1889, are: "As we drift — along the 
swift relentless current of time — towards the 
end of life ; as days, and weeks, and months, 
and years follow each other in breathless haste, 
and we reflect now and then for a moment 
that, at any rate for us, much of this earthly 
career has passed irrevocably ; what are the 
interests, the thoughts, ay, the books which 
really command our attention } what do we 
read and leave unread } what time do we 
give to the Bible } No other book, let us be 



110 VENETIAN SERMONS 

sure of it, can equally avail to prepare us for 
that which lies before us ; for the unknown 
anxieties and sorrows which are sooner or later 
the portion of most men and women ; for the 
gradual approach of death ; for the passage 
into the unseen world ; for the sights and 
sounds which will then burst upon us ; for the 
period, be it long or short, of waiting and 
preparation ; for the Throne and the Face of 
the Eternal Judge. Looking back from that 
world, how shall we desire to have made the 
most of our best guide to it ! how shall we 
grudge the hours we have wasted on any — 
be they thoughts, or books, or teachers — which 
only belong to the things of time ! " 

(3) Stones of the Law. — Another class of 
stones that exist in every quarter of the city, 
but more especially at the Rialto, and at the 
Doges' Palace — that is, at its Commercial and 
Judicial centres — is that of Edict-Stones^ or 
Stones of the haw. 

At the first-named centre, just across the 
Rialto Bridge, aproaching it from St. Mark's 
Square, stands one of the oldest churches in 
Venice, which was erected in the fifth century, 
San Giacomo di Rialto. Its north gable faces 
the bridge, and on it is carved in deep letters 
the famous inscription, as visible now as when 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 111 

cut nearly fifteen hundred years ago, but which 
no traveller seems to have noticed before Mr. 
Ruskin in 1877, and which he quotes over and 
over again in his works, telling us that it was 
the pride of his life to discover it : '' Hoc circa 
templum sit jus mercantihus aquum^ pondera nee 
vergant^ nee sit conventio prava " (Around this 
temple let the merchants' law (their principle 
of conduct) be just, let not their weights be 
false, nor their covenants unfaithful). The 
sanction for this precept we see inscribed on 
a simple cross set into the wall above it : " Sit 
crux vera salus huic tua Christe loco " (May Thy 
cross, O Christ, be the true safety of this 
place). 

The front of the church forms one side of 
the Market Square of S. Giacomo, and opposite 
it, on the other side, is one of the stones from 
which were published the laws of the State. 
It is commonly called // Gobbo^ because of the 
crouching figure which supports the staircase 
by which it is reached. It bears the inscrip- 
tion : " Lapis legibus Rep. edicendisT 

Not less significant are the Stones of the 
haw existing in the Judicial centre of the 
city — that is, at the Doges' Palace. The chief 
gateway of the palace, the Forta della Carta^ 
next St, Mark's Church, as its name imports, 



112 VENETIAN SERMONS 

and as its sculptures show, is in itself such a 
stone. Its name means the Door of the Papers, 
and it was so called because the secretaries sat 
here and wrote, and because all the more im- 
portant decrees of the State were affixed to it. 
Indeed all such decrees bore a clause, saying, 
that they should be published here and at 
the Rialto. Its sculptures also show it to be 
a Stone of the Law. It is a Gothic doorway, 
and over the ogive of its arch is a figure of 
Justice, symbolising Venice herself. She is 
seated on two lions, with a drawn sword in her 
right hand, and a pair of balances in her left, 
below her is the Lion of St. Mark, on either 
side of which in niches are figures representing 
Love, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. 
Close to the gateway is one of the chief angles 
of the palace, which is also a Stone of the 
Law. On the upper, or loggia part of it, is 
the Archangel Gabriel, whose name signifies, 
" the hero of God." He is regarded in the 
East as the angel of truth and justice, in whose 
hands will be placed the scales to weigh the 
actions of men at the last day. As announc- 
ing the birth of Christ, who was emphatically 
the Just and Righteous One, and who came 
to establish a kingdom of righteousness and 
reign in righteousness, Gabriel was regarded by 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 113 

the Venetians as the angel of politics and of 
good government. On the lower part of the 
angle is the Judgment of Solomon. The King 
sits on his throne, and beside him are the two 
mothers, the child, and an executioner. This 
latter holds the child ready to divide it, whilst 
its mother grasps his arm to stay him in the 
act. Immediately underneath this is the great 
eight-sided capital of the angle column. On 
its first side is sculptured Justice, similar to 
that which is above the gateway, and on the 
other seven sides are eminent legislators and 
governors, namely : Aristotle, with his treatise 
on government ; Moses, reading the book of 
the Law to the Israelites, who take an oath 
to observe it ; Solon ; Scipio Africanus ; Numa 
Pompilius ; Moses, receiving the tables of the 
Law ; and Trajan, doing justice to the widow. 

A few paces from this angle, at the corner 
of St. Mark's Church, stands a short, stout, 
porphyry pillar, called the Pietra del Bando 
(The Stone of Banishment). From the top 
of this column State edicts may have been 
published, but, as its name implies, it was the 
stone on which criminals were set to receive 
in public their sentences of punishment. 

Lastly, throughout the city are to be seen, 
sometimes set upright in the pavement, at a 



114 VENETIAN SERMONS 

public thoroughfare, as at the Rialto, sometimes 
inserted into walls, as at Campo S. Zaccaria 
and Campo S. Sebastiano, stones inscribed 
with laws regulating the sale of bread, fish, 
meat, and other foods, or forbidding gambling 
with cards, playing with balls, swearing, and 
making unseemly noises. On a wall near 
Campo Santa Fosca is inscribed " Bestemme 
non piii^ ma lodate Gesu " (Swear no more, but 
praise Jesus). 

Now let us ask, " What mean ye by these 
stones ? " They tell us that the throne of 
Venice was established in righteovisness. 

The w^ords on the old S. Giacomo Church, 
which Mr. Ruskin says " were the first Venice 
ever spake aloud," were an echo of those of 
Moses : " Thou shalt have a perfect and just 
weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou 
have." And this honesty and equity in busi- 
ness matters characterised Venice, and dignified 
and ennobled her merchants. She brought 
goods from all shores to her capital, so that 
the Rialto became the market of the world 
to which merchants from every clime were 
attracted, knowing that her spices and stuffs 
were as free from adulteration as her gold 
sequins, and that the maxims of the temple, 
around which their business was transacted, 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 115 

were obeyed — her merchants laws were just^ 
their weights were equal^ and their covenants 
were faithful. In the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries Venetians were the great bankers of 
Christendom. Not only private individuals, 
but cities and states deposited their moneys 
and securities with them. In 1423 the Doge 
Tommaso Mocenigo, a prince of great wis- 
dom and piety, addressing the Great Council 
in the interests of peace, reminded its members 
that their ambassadors and consuls were unani- 
mous in their testimony that they were the 
only power who traded on all seas with all 
lands, who were the fountain of trade, and 
the victuallers of the world, and that they 
were welcome everywhere. And the promise 
annexed to the Mosaic injunction to have a 
perfect and just weight and measure, " that 
thy days may be lengthened in the land which 
the Lord thy God giveth thee," was fulfilled 
in the history of Venice, for it was the longest- 
lived Republic the world has seen. 

The sculptures on and at the entrance to 
the Palace of the Doges — the Tribunal of 
Justice — show us that the Venetians realised 
that " He that ruleth over men must be just, 
ruling in the fear of God " ; that their Prince, 
to whom the poorest citizen had ever a free 



116 VENETIAN SERMONS 

access, should " remove violence and spoil, 
and execute judgment and justice." And 
their Doges, as a class, realised this ideal. The 
words of Tommaso Mocenigo (14 14-1423) 
fitted the lips of his predecessors and of his 
successors : " In all my actions I think first 
of justice, and then of the advantage of the 
State." We read in Venetian history, from 
the tenth century on to the sixteenth, of small 
duchies and princedoms around Venice — Padua, 
Treviso, Bologna, Piacenza, Verona, and of 
towns down both sides of the Adriatic, volun- 
tarily putting themselves under the suzerainty 
of Venice, and it was often the only time of 
peace and prosperity and liberty and justice 
they knev/. Mr. Ruskin quotes an old 
chronicler, Tentori, as saying that in the time 
of the Doge Francesco Dandolo (i 329-1 339) 
" there were sixty ambassadors from princes in 
Venice at the same time requesting the judg- 
ment of the Senate on matters of various 
concernment, so great was the fame of the 
uncorrupted justice of the Fathers." Venice 
was the only nation in Europe that restrained 
its soldiers from taking without payment 
goods from merchants and farmers whose 
territory was the seat of war, and which even 
compensated these classes, when the war was 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 117 

over, for losses they had sustained. Even as 
late as 1796, when the government of Venice 
is generally supposed to have been corrupt, the 
Emperor Joseph II., after hearing cases debated 
in the Great Council and in the Council of 
Forty, said that of all judicial systems the 
Venetian appeared to him the purest, and the 
best fitted to secure the ends of justice. 

St. Mark's Church and the Palace of the 
Doges were intimately connected. As the 
two buildings touched each other and com- 
municated with each other, so the civil in- 
fluence of the one and the religious influence 
of the other flowed over from the one into 
the other, making the Palace a Temple, and 
the Temple the Council Chamber and Judg- 
ment Hall of the nation ; and, as the Doge 
was Head of both, as he passed, by his state 
entrance, from the Church into the Palace, as 
he had often occasion to do, the following 
magnificent inscription, cut deep in the marble, 
shone brightly in letters of gold before his eyes : 

''''Dilige justitiam^ sua cunctis reddito jura ; 
Pauper cum vidua^pupillus^ et orphanus^ Dux! 
Te sibi patronum sperant ; plus omnibus esto ; 
Non timor^ aut odium, vel amor, nee te trahat 
aurum ; 



118 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Ut flos casurus, Dux es, cineresque facturus, 
Et velut ac turns ^ post mortem sic hahiturusT 

(Love justice, render to all their rights, 
Let the poor, with the widow, the minor, and 

the orphan, O Doge ! 
Hope to find in thee a defender ; be kind to all ; 
Let not fear, nor hate, nor love, nor gold 

influence you ; 
As a flower, thou shalt fade. Doge thou art, 

and to ashes shalt thou turn ; 
And as thy actions, so after death, shall be 

thy condition.) 

England is the successor of Venice in com- 
mand of the seas, in commercial supremacy ; 
and I may also confidently say that she is her 
successor in business honesty and in legal 
equity. Even our opponents witness to this, 
for in every foreign land the best guarantee 
of the genuineness and goodness of an article 
is to say that it is of English manufacture ; 
and, abroad, no Englishman's bond is refused 
or his word doubted. It is universally be- 
lieved that in the government there is no 
corruption, and that it is honourable in its 
dealings with all Powers. The condition of 
England's colonies the world over witness to 
the fact that her suzerainty, like that of her 



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STONES OF MEMORIAL 119 

antitype, is a pledge of liberty and progress. 
Wherever England goes, she carries the bless- 
ings of righteousness and good government in 
her train. 

If there is one truth more than another that 
runs through all Scripture, and which is 
reiterated by prophet and psalmist, by evan- 
gelist and apostle, it is that God is absolutely 
just and righteous. Justice, righteousness, is 
declared to be not only one of His essential at- 
tributes, it is declared to be a part of His very 
being. '' Touching the Almighty," Job said, 
" he is excellent in power, and in judgment, 
and in plenty of justice." "Justice and judg- 
ment are the habitation of thy throne ; " " Thy 
righteousness is like the great mountains, 
thy judgments are a great deep," said the 
Psalmist. And speaking by Isaiah, God said, 
" I the Lord speak righteousness, I declare 
things that are right." The whole Old 
Testament ritual of sacrifice and burnt-offering 
for sin proclaims God's righteousness, and in 
New Testament times, Christ, the visible image 
of God, was declared emphatically to be the 
Just and Righteous One, and His death was a 
sacrifice to Divine justice, for He died " that 
he (God) might be just, and the justifier of 
him which believeth in Jesus." 



120 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Justice, righteousness, is a foundation-stone 
in Christian character, in the structure of 
society, and in all stable government. Without 
it all three sooner or later go to pieces. Per- 
sonally, we know that by nature " all our 
righteousnesses are as filthy rags " in God's 
sight. Let us pray that God may give us 
grace " to break off our sins by righteous- 
ness " ; that He may clothe us with the 
spotless robe of the Redeemer's righteous- 
ness, and enable us to be " trees of righteous- 
ness, the planting of the Lord, that he 
might be glorified"; remembering that "the 
righteous Lord loveth righteousness, his coun- 
tenance doth behold the upright," and that 
" the work of righteousness shall be peace, 
and the effect of righteousness quietness and 
assurance for ever." 

(4) Stones of Infamy . — Another class of stones 
very different from those v/e have already con- 
sidered, and a class peculiar or nearly so, to 
Venice, is, Atones of Infamy. 

In the long history of Venice there were but 
two serious attempts at revolution, one in 
1 3 10, promoted by Querini and Tiepolo, and 
the other in 1364, promoted by the Doge 
Marino Falier — a remarkable fact when one 
thinks of the frequently recurring feuds, 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 121 

seditions, and insurrections that rent the other 
States of Italy. The aged conspirator, Doge 
Marino Falier, was beheaded. To him no Stone 
of Infamy was raised. But no stone could have 
covered with such eternal infamy his name, as 
does that simple black veil, bearing in white 
letters the words, " Hie est locus Marini Faletro^ 
decapitati pro criminibus^^ that marks the space 
where his portrait should have hung amongst 
his illustrious predecessors and successors in the 
Hall of the Great Council, in the Palace of the 
Doges. Marco Querini fell in resisting the 
Ducal troops, and his palace, near the Rialto, was 
turned into the common shambles. Bajamonte 
Tiepolo, who had been much favoured and 
trusted by the people, was banished, and his 
palace at Sant' Agostino was razed to the 
ground, and, as the decree said, for his "per- 
petual shame and disgrace," a Stone of Infamy 
was erected on the site. The stone was in 
the form of a short thick column, which 
rested on a solidly laid pedestal, and bore the 
following inscription : — 

" T)e Baiamonte fo questo terreno 
E mo per suo iniquo trodimento 
Posto in comun^ et per Paltrui spavento 
E per mostrar a tutti sempre senoT 



122 VENETIAN SERMONS 

This inscription cannot be rendered quite 
literally, but its meaning is — '* This land be- 
longed to Bajamonte, and for his iniquitous 
treason (this column) was erected, in view of 
the public, to be a terror to others, and a 
warning for ever to all." 

The column remained in its original position 
for nearly five hundred years, till, in 1758, at 
the earnest request of the family, the Govern- 
ment allowed it to be taken away, and a flat 
inscribed stone put in its place, which remains 
to this day. It is a square block of marble 
inserted in the pavement at the south-east 
corner of Campo Sant' Agostin, and is inscribed 
'^ Loc. Cal. Bat. The. 13 10." (The place of 
the Column of Baiamonti Tiepolo, 13 10.) 

As might be expected, the place where these 
Stones of Infamy are chiefly to be seen is at the old 
Tribunal of Justice, the Doges' Palace. Even 
there they are not very numerous, only some 
nine in all. They consist of flat tablets, built 
into the palace walls, in conspicuous positions, 
so that they catch the eye and can be easily 
read. Some are at that place of public resort, 
the great southern gateway, the Forta della 
Grand Guardia that fronts the open lagoon, 
according to the saying of Amos, " Hate the 
evil, and love the good, and establish judgment 








COLUMN OF INFAMY TO BAJAMONTE TIEPOLO 

To face page 122 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 123 

in the gate ; " others are on the walls under 
the quadrangle colonnade where officials walked, 
and others on the wall of the Piazzetta colon- 
nade, which is a public thoroughfare. These 
stones are inscribed with the names and desig- 
nations, with the crimes and punishments, of 
men who had held positions of honour and 
responsibility in the government and in the 
army, and who had proved themselves unfaith- 
ful to the trust reposed in them. One, for 
example, runs thus : " Gio. Giacomo Capro, 
accountant in the Treasury of the Magistracy 
of Corn, was banished by the High Council 
of Ten, on Sept. 6th, 171 8, as an unfaithful 
minister, who was guilty of a serious appro- 
priation of money from the said Treasury." 
On another stone we read : '' 1727, Nov. 12th, 
Pietro Bontio, late Controller in the Chamber 
of Armaments, was banished by the High 
Council of Ten, for grave and extensive thefts 
committed by him in that Chamber." A 
third stone tells a different tale. It is thus 
inscribed: "1657, Feb. 15th, Gioralmo Lore- 
dan and Giovanni Contarini were banished for 
abandoning the fortress of Tenedos, leaving it 
freely in the hands of the Turks, with arms 
and public munitions, to the notable damage 
of Christianity and of the Country." 



124 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Let us now ask the question, '' What mean 
ye by these stones ? " 

In Venice there was a law, in force from 
earliest times till the decadence of the Republic, 
that no monument should be erected in face of 
the public to citizens who had distinguished 
themselves. Such monuments might be erected 
in churches or in the enclosed quadrangles of 
private palaces, but not in open public places. 
The reason for this was that all Venetian 
citizens were supposed to be filled with loyalty, 
with bravery, with whole-hearted devotion to 
the service of the State, and that therefore the 
erection of monuments to any one who had 
shown these qualities was a reflection upon 
others who were equally ready to show them 
should opportunity offer. The singling out 
of the few seemed to cast a stigma upon 
the many. On the other hand, cowardly, dis- 
loyal, unworthy citizens were supposed always 
to be few in number, and therefore it was 
easier and more to the purpose, when one such 
exposed himself, to erect a monument to him. 

These Stones of Infamy^ therefore, witness, 
directly, to the comparative rarity of disloyalty, 
of pusillanimity, and of dishonesty amongst 
the public servants and officers of the State ; 
and they witness indirectly to the loyalty, 



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STONES OF MEMORIAL 125 

courageousness, integrity, and trustworthiness of 
these men as a whole. They witness also to 
the detestation with which crimes of treason, 
of appropriation of public funds, of cowardice, 
and of unfaithfulness to trust on the part of 
Government servants was regarded, and to the 
severity of the punishment inflicted on those 
found guilty of such deeds. 

Happily, in England, amongst the servants 
of the Crown such deeds are as rare as they 
ever were in the Venetian Republic, although 
too frequently of late, in these days of hasten- 
ing to be rich, the public are shocked by the 
fall of an individual, or the crash of a company, 
in which their trust had been misplaced. 

But it becomes us all to remember that in 
a higher sense, in the sight of Heaven, we are 
all ministers, servants, stewards. " We are not 
our own." All we are, all we have, life itself, 
and all its opportunities and capabilities, is a 
trust — a trust carrying with it the gravest re- 
sponsibility and accountability. Our Lord and 
Master has warned us in His parables against 
the two evils — of hoarding His goods and 
talents uselessly, and of squandering them 
prodigally. The Apostle Paul says, " It is 
required in stewards, that a man be found 
faithful," and, speaking of himself, he says, 



126 VENETIAN SERMONS 

that he had " obtained mercy of the Lord to 
be faithful." Let us pray for similar mercy, 
remembering that no Stones of Infamy may 
be raised to us here, yet sin unforgiven does 
not go unpunished. As Canon Liddon has 
said in his book, Some Elements of Religion : 
" The sternest things that have ever been said 
as regards sin's prospects in another world first 
passed the tenderest lips that ever proclaimed 
God's love to man." 

(5) White Stones. — In The Palace (p. 22) I 
have spoken of stones of beauty, " glistering 
stones, and of divers colours," and so passing 
over these, and some others I might mention, I 
come to speak lastly of White Stones, 

In many of the smaller houses of Venice, 
there is set conspicuously in an angle of the 
wall, generally at the height of ten or twelve 
feet from the ground, so that the eye naturally 
rests upon it, a White Stone. It shines clean 
and bright amongst the too frequently crum- 
bling bricks. Age and exposure to the weather, 
that seem to darken and blacken its surround- 
ings, only serve to bleach and whiten it, and 
to make it stand out more and more in relief. 

" What mean ye by these stones } " They 
generally serve a double purpose, that of 
ornament and that of use — of beauty and 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 127 

of utility. They decorate the building by 
relieving to the eye its uniformly red brick 
colour, and they give compactness and solidity 
to the angles in which they are set. They 
are decorative stones, being generally of white 
Istrian marble ; and they are binding stones, 
holding the more fragile bricks in place. 

But for us they have a higher meaning, a 
spiritual meaning. They suggest those white 
stones of which we read in the Book of the 
Revelation of St. John, which our Lord pro- 
mises to give to those who are conquerors in 
the battle of life, to those who overcome by 
His blood — the blood of the Lamb. " To him 
that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden 
manna, and will give him a white stone, and in 
the stone a new name written, which no man 
knoweth saving he that receiveth it." 

Let us not be content to avoid having Stones 
of Infamy raised to us, but let us covet to 
possess the White Stone — this precious stone, 
clean and bright, this pledge of Christ^s love 
and favour, this token of Divine honour and 
glory, this stone of our credentials as Chris- 
tians, as belonging to Christ and as possessing 
Christ,^ "my beloved is mine and I am his," 
this stone of secret, personal attachment and 
love. It is said to have a name, " a new 



128 VENETIAN SERMONS 

name," "written," cut, engraved upon it, 
"which no man knoweth saving he which 
receiveth it." We read in the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures of God changing the names 
of patriarchs and prophets when they entered 
upon a new and near and personal relationship 
with Himself; and we read in the New Testa- 
ment of our Lord bestowing new names on 
those who became new creatures in Him. 
The new name engraved on the white stone is 
thus a further pledge and token of a new and 
intimate, of a personal and secret, relationship 
existing between the receiver and the Bestower, 
between the believer and Christ. "Thou shalt 
be called by a new name, which the mouth of 
the Lord shall name," said Isaiah to God's 
children in his day ; and David gives expression 
to the same thought in the words, " The secret 
of the Lord is with them that fear him ; and 
he will show them his covenant." 

We have thus endeavoured to understand 
the meaning of those different classes of 
memorial stones set up in Venice — Stones of 
Christian Faith and Life^ Stones of Scripture, 
Stones of the Law, Stones of Infamy, and 
White Stones. And now to gather up into 
a single sentence their united meaning and 
testimony, I may say that they teach us, with 



STONES OF MEMORIAL 129 

emphasis and clearness and power, the lesson 
that it was not, as some say, by irreligion and 
injustice, by tyranny and cruelty, by worldli- 
ness and pleasure-seeking, that the Venetians 
became wealthy and powerful as individuals, 
and that their Republic became strong and 
progressive and enduring ; but it was by the 
exercise of virtues the very opposite of these 
vices. The united testimony of these stones 
witnesses to the existence in the hearts of the 
people of a real, vital and intelligent, because 
scriptural, religious faith, which was the source 
and spring of their conduct, and which led 
them onward from strength to strength, from 
victory to victory, to that superlative greatness 
which raised them high above all contemporary 
peoples and nations. And, than that vital, 
active, practical, and personal Christian faith, 
there is no other influence, no other power, 
which can insure and increase and perpetuate 
personal and national prosperity and greatness. 
It becomes us to remember this fact, both as 
individuals and as a nation, lest, forgetting it, 
as Venice did at last, we *'may be led," to 
quote the words used by Mr. Ruskin in the 
very first sentence he ever penned about the 
Republic, *' through prouder eminence to less 
pitied destruction." 

J 



LIVING WATER 



" The glorious Lord will be unto us a place of 
broad rivers and streams." — Isaiah xxxiii. 21. 



LIVING WATER 

*'7/^ thou knewest the gift of God, and who it 
is that saith to thee. Give me to drink ; thou 
wouldest have asked of him, and he would have 
given thee living water.'' — John iv. lo. 

A FEATURE of Vcnice that usually strikes 
and interests travellers is its wells. In the 
centre of almost every campo (once, as the word 
indicates, a green field, now a paved square), 
in front of almost every church, in every 
courtyard, in every cloister, in the internal 
quadrangular space open to the sky of every 
palace (corresponding with the ancient peri- 
stylium and impluvium)^ in gardens, and not 
unfrequently inside dwelling-houses themselves, 
there are wells. These are marked by well- 
heads, massive hollow blocks of marble, the 
oldest of which — the Byzantine — are cylindrical 
in form ; the others — the Gothic — resemble 
capitals, of which the well is the column or 
shaft. Almost all of them are richly sculptured, 

133 



134 VENETIAN SERMONS 

the Byzantine ones with rehgious symbolism — 
crosses, palm trees, birds, and animals ; the 
Gothic with natural and grotesque figures and 
objects. And as we see these wells surrounded 
on a sunny afternoon by picturesque groups of 
gossiping Venetian women, with their bright- 
coloured dresses and shining copper vessels, 
come to draw water, we cannot but think 
(even though we are in a city) of Eastern wells 
and Eastern scenes, such as those associated in 
Old Testament Scripture with Rebekah and 
Isaac, with Jacob and Rachel, with Moses and 
the daughters of the priest of Midian ; and of 
the ever memorable scene, from which my text 
is taken, of our Lord's discourse with the 
woman of Samaria by the old historic well of 
Sychar — a well cut deep in the rock, and easily 
identified at the present time. 

But more interesting than the wells of Venice 
to travellers who visit this city is its water 
supply, because whilst the former have but a 
sentimental interest, the latter has a practical 
one. Is the water drawn from these wells good.? 
Is it wholesome ? Where does it come from ? 
Is it safe to drink the water offered us in the 
hotels ? May we drink of it freely ? These 
are some of the questions often asked by the 
traveller, and very important questions they 




A\va Photo 

GOTHIC WELL-HEAD LN CLOISTERS OF SAN GREGORIO 



To face page 134 



LIVING WATER 135 

are ; for, as we all know, water is very liable to 
contamination, and the drinking or refusal to 
drink of it may be a matter of health or sickness, 
of life or death, at any time, for any of us. 

There are other wells than those we see and 
admire in Venice, and another kind of water 
in which we should be interested than that 
offered to us here to drink, for there is a thirst 
of the soul as well as a thirst of the body. 
Our spirits, if in a normal state, thirst, with 
an appetite, with a longing, as real and as 
imperious as that of the body, and which, if 
unsatisfied, is followed by far more sad and 
disastrous results. The thirst of the body is 
the sign and proof that the body wants water 
for its health and life, and the thirst of the 
soul bears similar testimony to its needs. The 
body may die of physical thirst, and the soul 
may die of spiritual thirst. 

But we are too apt at all times to forget the 
latter half of this truth, and especially when 
we are travelling about amongst the excitement 
and novelty of ''fresh fields and pastures new," 
and thus, when in Venice and in other foreign 
cities, travellers sometimes are very anxious as to 
obtaining good drinking water, whilst they are 
quite thoughtless and indifferent about obtain- 
ing that living water required by their souls. 



136 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Such indifFerence is not only blameworthy, 
but foolish. It is rebuked by our Lord when 
He tells us to "Take no thought (anxiety), 
saying, What shall we eat ? or, What shall 
we drink ? " ; it is rebuked by our Lord in the 
words of my text, spoken to the woman at the 
well of Sychar — " If thou knewest the gift of 
God, and who it is that saith to thee. Give me 
to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of him, and 
he would have given thee living water." It is 
foolish to be concerned about water to slake 
the body's thirst, whilst unconcerned about 
that better water that slakes the thirst of the 
soul. It is foolish to be anxious to satisfy 
the needs of the perishable body, whilst care- 
less about satisfying those of the imperishable 
soul, that will go on living when our bodies 
have crumbled into dust. 

And now let me say something about the 
water supply of Venice. When I first knew 
this city, in 1882, it was dependent for its 
drinking water mainly on the many wells of 
which I have been speaking. Some few of 
them are natural springs, others (some nine in 
number, which have lately been increased to 
twenty-one) are artesian, but the bulk of them 
are simply shafts for the collection of rain 
water that percolates into them through beds 



1^1 








LIVING WATER 137 

of sand and gravel. This supply was supple- 
mented by water brought in barges from the 
Brenta Canal {Seriola Venetd) at Fusina, on the 
mainland. Sometimes it was brought in bulk, 
the barge becoming a huge water-tank, but 
oftener it came in large open-mouthed tubs. 
Mr. Ruskin, writing half a century ago, 
incidentally mentions this mode of bringing 
water to Venice. Describing an excursion to 
Murano, he says — " We push our way on, 
between large barges laden with fresh water 
from Fusina, in round white tubs, seven feet 
across.'' This barge water was then transferred 
to cisterns in hotels and private houses. But 
this supply of water for the requirements of 
Venice was not satisfactory. The imported 
water was apt to become stale, and the well 
water brackish and impure. 

Accordingly, in 1884, an attempt was made 
to improve matters. The water was drawn 
from the same mainland source, but large re- 
servoirs and filtration works were constructed 
at Moranzani, a little way inland from Fusina, 
from which the water was brought to Venice 
in pipes laid on the bed of the lagoon. On 
reaching Venice it was run, in the first instance, 
into a huge reservoir at Sant' Andrea, near the 
railway station, from which, by means of steam 



138 VENETIAN SERMONS 

power, it was driven into pipes which dis- 
tributed it throughout the city. 

But soon it was felt that even yet there was 
a radical defect in the Venice water supply, for 
the water itself, notwithstanding its filtration 
and coming to Venice in pipes, being drawn 
from a canal, could not be perfectly good. A 
new source of water was therefore sought. 
Now geologists had before this pointed out 
that the formation of the country around 
Venice, formed, as it is, of deposits from the 
great chain of Dolomite mountains that bounds 
it to the north, warranted them in believing 
that at no great distance below the surface, 
what are called water-bearing strata of sand 
would be found. Accordingly, search was 
made, and at a place called Sant' Ambrogio, 
about twelve miles west from Mestre, the 
geological theory was confirmed. A number 
of natural springs were discovered, and by 
boring to the small depth of some forty feet, 
the water-bearing sand strata was reached. In 
fact, a river of water flowing on a bed of 
sand and gravel, with a layer of clay at some 
distance above it and another below it, was 
struck. The dozen or so of natural springs 
were supplemented by three hundred artesian 
wells, and an abundant and never-failing supply 



LIVING WATER 139 

of the purest drinking water, free from every 
trace of organic matter, was obtained. In 1892 
this water was brought to Venice instead of the 
other, and it is this which is now distributed 
throughout the city. Those of the pubhc 
wells in the Campos, from which the poor 
people draw their water, that were formerly 
fed by filtered rain and surface water, are now 
fed by this pure spring water. They have 
now become simply cisterns into which a 
supply of this water is daily run. Thus the 
water supply of Venice is perfect and abundant, 
adequate to meet the needs of all, and we may 
slake our thirst with it freely at any of its 
wells. 

And now let us think of that other kind of 
water of which we need to drink in order to 
satisfy the needs of our souls. It is that of 
which our Saviour spoke to the woman of 
Samaria, in distinction from, and in contrast 
to, the water of Jacob's Well. It is called 
" living water." Sometimes this term is applied 
to natural waters, as in Gen. xxvi. 19, where 
we read that " Isaac's servants digged in the 
valley, and found there a well of springing 
(in the Hebrew living) water," and in Lev. 
xiv. 5, we read, in regard to the cleansing of 
leprosy, that the priest shall command to kill 



140 VENETIAN SERMONS 

a clean bird over running (again in the Hebrew 
living) water," and Solomon speaks of *' a 
fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, 
and streams from Lebanon." Yes, earthly 
waters springing up in the green sward, or 
gushing from the clefts of the rock, are figura- 
tively called living waters, but the really living 
water is this spiritual water, which, like that 
of Ezekiel's vision, " makes everything to live 
whither the waters come." It is not only a 
refreshment of life, it is endowed with life, 
possessed with life, and so it communicates life. 
It gives spiritual life. It refreshes the thirsty 
soul ; but it does more, it quickens to new 
life the soul dead in trespasses and sins. It 
cleanses from the leprous stain of sin, it cures 
the leprous disease of sin. It makes the parched, 
barren, lifeless soul to become " like a watered 
garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters 
fail not." 

And where is this water to be found } It is 
found in Christ. *' If thou knewest the gift of 
God, and who it is that saith to thee. Give me 
to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of him, 
and he would have given thee living water." 
** With Christ is the fountain of life." 

It is Christ that our souls need for the quench- 
ing of their thirst. It is He who can meet and 




jmrnm 



LIVING WATER 141 

satisfy our deepest wants and longings. Christ 
in the fulness of His person divine and human, 
Christ in the efficacy of His atoning death. 

I know that in Isaiah we read of " wells of 
salvation," out of which God's people "draw 
water with joy"; and in Zechariah we read, 
" And it shall be in that day, that living waters 
shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them to- 
ward the former sea, and half of them toward the 
hinder sea : in summer and in winter shall it be ;" 
and often in sculpture, painting, and mosaic, 
one sees the four rivers of Paradise, of the Old 
Testament dispensation, transfigured and trans- 
formed for us, in New Testament times, to the 
four streams of the Gospel. But just as in 
Venice there are hundreds of wells, but all are 
supplied by the same water, from the same 
source, so all these waters have their common 
source in Christ. They all come from Him, 
like the waters of Ezekiel's vision, that issued 
forth from under the threshold of His temple. 
It is Christ, and Christ alone, who is the Foun- 
tain of living waters, the Fountain that comes 
" forth from the house of the Lord " for the 
slaking of the soul's thirst. 

We may recall some Old Testament words 
that speak of the soul's thirst and its satisfac- 
tion. These, for example, of Ps. xlii. i, 2 : "As 



142 VENETIAN SERMONS 

the hart panteth after the water brooks, so 
panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul 
thirsteth for God, for the living God." Or 
these of Ps. Ixiii. i, '' O God, thou art my 
God ; early will I seek thee : my soul thirsteth 
for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and 
thirsty land, where no water is." Yes, our 
souls thirst for God, because, as Augustine 
long ago said, God Himself has implanted in us 
this thirst. " Tu nos fecisti ad 7>, Domine, et 
inquietum est cor nostrum^ donee requiescat in TeT 
(Thou, O Lord, hast made us for Thyself, and 
our heart is restless, till it rest in Thee.) 

But, whilst this is so, we must remember 
that God the Father can only be known, can 
only be apprehended, can only be approached, 
through Christ. Isaiah, in the sixth chapter of 
his book, tells us of a vision that he had of 
God : " In the year that king Uzziah died 
I saw also the Lord." But what does the 
Apostle John say concerning this very vision ? 
" These things said Isaiah, when he saw 
Christ's glory and spake of him." And we 
read of Moses striking the rock Horeb in the 
Wilderness of Sin, when waters gushed out and 
flowed to the camp of the thirsty Israelites at 
Rephidim. '' God pouring v/ater upon him 
that was thirsty, and floods upon the dry 



LIVING WATER 143 

ground," causing ''waters to break out in the 
wilderness, and streams in the desert." But 
the Apostle Paul, commenting on this, says : 
" They did all drink the same spiritual drink, 
for they drank of the rock that followed them, 
and that rock was Christ." 

Thus our souls thirst for God, but Christ 
" is the image of the invisible God." He is 
" God manifest in the flesh," '*in him dwelleth 
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." To 
the demand of Thomas, " Lord, show us the 
Father," Jesus answered, *' He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father." Therefore it is 
that our Saviour claims to be the sole way back 
to God : " No man cometh unto the Father but 
by me." Therefore it is that Jesus Christ is 
the Water of Life, that slakes our soul's thirst ; 
therefore it is that He alone is this, that He 
alone bestows the *' living water." 

And He is able and willing to bestow this 
water upon all. There is in Him an abundant 
supply, sufficient to meet the needs of all. No 
one can go to this fountain, and find the water 
either frostbound by winter's cold, or dried up 
by summer's heat. 

We read, in John vii. 37, that, at the Feast 
of Tabernacles, " in the last day, that great 
day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, 



144 VENETIAN SERMONS 

If any man thirst, let him come unto me, 
and drink." " If any man thirst," no matter 
who he may be, rich or poor, learned or 
ignorant, white or black, '*let him come unto 
me, and drink." This living water, fitted and 
alone fitted to quench that spiritual thirst felt 
by every one, is found in Him in measureless 
abundance, more than adequate to meet the 
needs of all. The waters may fail from the sea, 
and the flood decay and dry up, and " cause the 
drink of the thirsty to fail," but Christ says 
to each coming to Him : " I will satisfy thy 
soul in drought, and thou shalt be like a watered 
garden, and like a spring of water whose waters 
fail not." 

** Whose waters fail not ! " What does our 
Saviour say further of the "living water" which 
He thus freely offers to all ? " The water 
that I shall give him shall be in him a well 
of water, springing up into everlasting life." 
He who drinks of it shall become, as it were, 
himself a springing well. Therefore whosoever 
drinketh of the water of earth " shall thirst 
again," but " whosoever drinketh of the water 
that I shall give him shall never thirst." He 
shall thirst for no other water than that which 
Jesus gives him, and he shall have abundance 
of it always. Therefore he can never suffer 



LIVING WATER 145 

thirst again. His thirst is relieved not tem- 
porarily, but for ever. It may be said not to 
be relieved at all, but to be cured ; the painful 
appetite of an unsatisfied heart is not assuaged 
only, it is taken away. The words of Isaiah 
are fulfilled in believers in Jesus. " They shall 
not hunger nor thirst . . . for he that hath 
mercy on them shall lead them, even by the 
springs of water shall he guide them." And 
Jesus said unto them, " He that cometh to 
me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on 
me shall never thirst." " Whosoever drinketh 
of the water that I shall give him shall never 
thirst." 

There is something peculiarly appropriate 
and suggestive in our Lord's speaking of Him- 
self, and of the blessings He bestows upon 
us, under the figure of " living water." For 
water plays a part in the creation, sustenance, 
and growth of physical life, and in the dis- 
charge of life's functions, and in the perform- 
ance of life's work, that we oftentimes fail 
to realise. For what is water ? I do not ask 
what it is in its essential nature and constituent 
parts, but what it is in its visible properties 
and place and action in the economy of nature ? 
Physiologists tell us that it lies at the base 
of all life ; that where there is no water 

K 



146 VENETIAN SERMONS 

there is no life. Before life can be generated, 
either in the vegetable or animal kingdom, 
there must be water. If water is not present, 
its production is an impossibility. There 
are great scientific truths underlying such 
statements as those in the account given us 
of the Creation in the first chapter of Genesis : 
" And the Spirit of God moved upon the face 
of the waters ; " " And God said, Let the waters 
bring forth abundantly the moving creature that 
hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth 
in the open firmament of heaven." 

Necessary for the production of life, water 
is also necessary for its continuance. Every 
particle of living matter contains water in 
itself. Life cannot be sustained without it. 
If water is entirely withdrawn from it, it dies. 
A handful of corn seed that may have lain 
long on the barn floor looks parched and dry 
enough, yet the germ inside every seed is to 
a certain extent moist, if it is alive. And 
that the germ-life in seeds remains alive for 
years and centuries is due to the construction 
of their outer envelopes, of their capsules, 
which are marvellously adapted to preserve 
the moisture within them from evaporation. 

Water, too, is necessary for the growth of 
life. No living thing can expand, and increase. 



LIVING WATER 147 

and develop without water. If water is not 
supplied in adequate quantities life is hindered, 
and growth is retarded or cheeked altogether. 
The very rapidity of the growth of life is 
often dependent on the quantity of water 
supplied. Hence living organisms consist 
largely of water. Animalcula or protozoa- 
hfe is water-life. We are told that when the 
water, in a drop of which millions of these 
creatures live, is evaporated, there is hardly 
any residuum of solid matter left behind. 
Four-fifths of the substance of vegetables is 
water, and even of the human organism water 
is the main constituent. 

Again, no food can nourish life that is not 
first dissolved in water. Nutriment must be 
reduced to a liquid state by the action of water 
before it can be taken up and assimilated by 
the system. Hence all nutrient matter that 
we take is distributed through the system in 
solution. Nor can living power be exercised 
without the presence of water. The brain 
matter, the muscles, the fibres, the nerves in 
our bodies that are concerned in thinking, 
working, walking, speaking, cannot perform 
their functions without the aid of water. And 
if sufficient water is not present, movement and 
action are hampered and hindered. 



148 VENETIAN SERMONS 

The appetite of thirst, then, is only nature's 
imperious call for water, essential for the put- 
ting forth of life's activities, for life's growth, 
for life's very existence. 

And in like manner Christ lies at the base 
of all spiritual life. 

He is essential to the creation of spiritual 
life. Where Christ is not, there may be much 
moral beauty, but there is no spiritual life. 
By nature " we are dead in trespasses and 
sins," and it is Christ who brings our dead 
souls to life. '*He that hath the Son hath 
life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath 
not life." 

It is Christ, likewise, that sustains life in 
us. It is only in union with Him that we 
can live. " I am crucified with Christ, never- 
theless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in 
me." It is only in union with Him we can 
increase and grow, grow " unto a perfect man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ " ; '* grow up into him in all things, 
which is the head, even Christ." 

And all the rich provision that God has 
made for our spiritual nourishment only profits 
us when we receive it sphered in Christ. The 
study of nature, of providence, of history, of 
the Bible, only spiritually nourishes those who 




GOTHIC WELL AT MURAXO 



To face page 148 



LIVING WATER 149 

regard these things from a Christian stand- 
point. " Man doth not live by bread alone, 
but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God doth man live/' but to obtain 
the life-sustaining good of that word we must 
see Christ in it. 

Again, only in union with Him can our 
spiritual faculties be profitably exercised, only 
in union with Him can we do spiritual work : 
" As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, 
except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, 
except ye abide in me. . . . He that abideth 
in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth 
much fruit, for without me ye can do nothing." 
" The fruits of righteousness " which we are 
called upon to bring forth, are "by Jesus 
Christ." "The life which I now live in the 
flesh," says the Apostle Paul, who " laboured 
more abundantly than they all," "I live by 
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me 
and gave himself for me." 

It has been nobly said, " There is no wealth 
but life ; " and blessed be God, the very mission 
of Christ is to give, and sustain, and amplify 
this wealth : " I am come that they might 
have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly." 

What water is in the physical world, that 



150 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Christ is in the spiritual ; and our spiritual 
thirst is only the call of our higher nature for 
Christ, in order to its life and growth, and 
the putting forth of its powers in work. 

In closing, let us ask ourselves what is our 
attitude towards Christ, how do we regard 
this ''living water"? The elaborately and 
beautifully carved well-heads of Venice show 
the value the old Venetians set on the obtain- 
ing and possession of good drinking water. 
They did not regard water as a common thing. 
Living in their sea-girt island homes they 
realised its preciousness. Do we realise in 
like manner the preciousness of the " living 
water " which Christ gives ; counting it to be, 
as life itself is, above all money and all price. 

And are we showing our realisation of its 
preciousness, not only by building lofty and 
ornate churches and cathedrals, not only by 
rites and ceremonies and oft-repeated sacra- 
ments, which are at best but as vessels and 
channels for its distribution, but by drinking 
of the pure water of life, each for himself 
and herself; by coming to Christ Himself 
for the satisfaction of all our spiritual wants 
and longings ^ 

There is a tendency to go elsewhere for the 
assuaging of our spiritual thirst. There is a 



LIVING WATER 151 

tendency to rest in these very temples and 
ceremonies to which 1 have referred, which is 
really to put the vessel in the place of the 
water. Hence the warning the Archbishop of 
York has given : " We ought to return," he 
said, " to the simplicity of the ministry of the 
early Christian Church." And, as in the far 
back days of Jeremiah, so in every age, and 
so at the present time, there are those who 
go to wrong sources altogether, seeking at the 
fountains of learning, or pleasure, or wealth, 
or worldly ambition, to satisfy the longings of 
their immortal spirits. There is still cause for 
the Divine lamentation uttered by the lips of 
the prophet : " My people have committed two 
evils, they have forsaken me, the fountain of 
living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, 
broken cisterns, that can hold no water." 

In the economy of nature we know that 
nothing can take the place of water. God 
has given us that one element for the quench- 
ing of thirst. There are many and varied 
drinks which we may take. Our tables too 
often bear witness to the multiplicity of wines 
and waters that are manufactured at the present 
day. But we ought to remember that it is 
only the water that these may happen to con- 
tain that meets and slakes the appetite of 



152 VENETIAN SERMONS 

thirst. Would it not, then, be better for us 
all — it would be much better, I am sure, in 
many cases — to pass by these artificial drinks, 
and to content ourselves with the indispen- 
sable gift of heaven, pure, clear, sparkling, 
unadulterated water. And in like manner we 
ought to remember that God has given us in 
the spiritual world one element alone for the 
quenching of our thirst, the "living water" 
to be found in Christ. " Neither is there 
salvation in any other, for there is none other 
name under heaven, given among men, whereby 
we must be saved." Passing by, then, all inter- 
mediaries of every class and kind, we should 
come to Him, directly and personally, to 
drink unadulterated the pure water of life. 
And if we are really spiritually thirsty this 
we will do ; just as when a man is really 
suffering from the appetite of thirst, when his 
lips and throat are dry and parched, when he 
is, as we say, ''consumed with thirst," then 
he wants water, nothing else but water. Oh, 
how grateful is " cold water to a thirsty soul ! " 
Yes, when a man realises himself to be a sinner 
in God's sight, when he feels the burden of 
his sins — a burden too heavy for him to bear — ■ 
when, like the Philippian jailer he cries out in 
an agony of mind, "What must I do to be 




GOTHIC WELL LN A CAMPO 



To face page 15: 



LIVING WATER 153 

saved ? ", then he wants Christ, then he wants 
" living water/' then he is content to know 
nothing but " Jesus Christ, and him crucified." 
Blessed are they who sooner or later are in 
that condition, " Blessed are they who hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 
filled." 

"They shall be filled." Christ meets all 
seeking souls with this great gift. " If thou 
knewest the gift of God, and who it is that 
saith to thee. Give me to drink; thou wouldest 
have asked of him, and he would have given 
thee living water." None need perish from 
spiritual thirst. As Venice is dotted over with 
wells, all containing the same pure drinking 
water, so Christ has surrounded us with means 
of grace, has opened for us on every hand 
fountains from which flows His " living water." 
We are invited to come and drink, and live. 
" Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
waters ! " "I will pour water upon him that 
is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground : I 
will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my 
blessing upon thine offspring," and " thou 
shalt be like a well-watered garden, and like 
a spring of water, whose waters fail not." 

Drinking of Christ, the " living water," 
through the channels of earth — for we have 



154 VENETIAN SERMONS 

this treasure now in earthen vessels — we shall 
hereafter drink of Christ in the New Jerusalem, 
where "The glorious Lord will be unto us 
a place of broad rivers and streams," where 
flows the " pure river of water of life, clear 
as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God 
and of the Lamb." And the Lamb which is 
in the midst of the throne shall feed us, and 
shall lead us unto living fountains of waters. 

" O Christ, He is the fountain, 

The deep sweet well of love ; 
The streams on earth I've tasted, 

More deep I'll drink above ; 
There to an ocean fulness, 

His mercy doth expand ; 
And glory — glory dwelleth 

In Immanuel's land." 

" The Spirit and the bride say. Come. And 
let him that heareth say. Come. And let him 
that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let 
him take the water of life freely." 



VI 
TEMPLES OF GOD 



" Behold the man whose name is The 
BRANCH ... and he shall build the temple 
of the Lord : even he shall build the temple of 
the Lord ; and he shall bear the glory." 

— Zech. vi. 12, 13. 



'^*'? ••'•*'■: --♦'fe,' 




*.. ' V 



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i 



VI 
TEMPLES OF GOD 

*' Te are the temple of God y — i Cor. Hi. i6. 

" Te are the temple of the living God.''' 

— 2 Cor. vi. 1 6. 

In these words the Apostle Paul figuratively 
calls Christians Temples of God^ Temples of the 
Living God. Sometimes this image is used 
by him of Christians collectively — of the 
Church as a whole. As, for example, when 
he says (Eph. ii. 20, 21), "And are built upon 
the foundation of the apostles and prophets, 
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner 
stone ; in whom all the building fitly framed 
together groweth unto an holy temple in the 
Lord." And in like manner the Apostle 
Peter says (i Pet. ii. 4, 5), "To whom coming, 
as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of 
men, but chosen of God, and precious. Ye also, 
as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house.'* 
But, as Christianity deals with us not only 

157 



158 VENETIAN SERMONS 

collectively, but also, and very specially, as 
individuals ; as it has disclosed to the world, 
as nothing else has done, the unspeakable value 
and sacredness and dignity of each separate 
life, the figure is also used of individual 
Christians, and this is the case in my texts. 
St. Paul, addressing his Corinthian converts, 
and addressing us as separate individuals, says, 
"Ye are the temple of God." "Ye are the 
temple of the living God." 

The figure here used was, on the lips of the 
Apostle, one of momentous import. I do not 
know that he, as a Jew, could have used a 
more solemn, a more significant symbolism, or 
one more in harmony with that exalted view 
of the gift of life and of the individual value 
of every soul, of which I have just spoken. 
For, amongst every people, the word used, 
equivalent to that of temple, means a house 
erected for their god. And it was so amongst 
the Jews ; only, with this tremendous differ- 
ence, that whilst in many lands the temples 
were those of false gods, of dumb, dead idols, 
consisting of so much wood or stone, and so 
much carving and colouring, that in Jerusalem 
was the Temple of the Living God. " For all 
the gods of the nations are idols." But that 
temple has long since disappeared. Centuries 



TEMPLES OF GOD 159 

have gone by since our Saviour's words con- 
cerning it were fulfilled, " Seest thou these 
great buildings ? There shall not be left one 
stone upon another, that shall not be thrown 
down." 

To understand the metaphor, however, we 
need not recall descriptions of the Jewish 
temple ; it will be sufficient to think of any 
Christian temple familiar to us. But, as we 
are here in Venice, perhaps we shall be best 
helped if we think of the Church of St. Mark, 
that glorious world-famed temple near which 
we are now met, which presents not a few 
points analogous to those of the first temple 
at Jerusalem. For St. Mark's, like Solomon's 
temple, was built by kings — one preparing for 
its construction, and another building it. In 
829 the Doge Giustiniano Partecipazio, like 
King David, conceived the idea of building 
an house, "exceeding magnifical, of fame and 
of glory throughout all countries," and he 
" made provision " for it before his death, pre- 
paring materials abundantly, timber, precious 
marbles, and gold ; and his successor Giovanni 
Partecipazio, like King Solomon, built the 
house with promptitude and energy. This 
temple too, like that, owned no allegiance to 
any ecclesiastical authority, but was ruled, in 



160 VENETIAN SERMONS 

the name of God and the people, by its Prince, 
whose house — the Ducal Palace — like King 
Solomon's, touched the sacred walls. Into 
this, as into that, the people brought their 
trophies of victory, and they " hanged their 
shields upon its walls round about." This 
temple, like that, became the centre of the 
nation's life, civil as well as religious. It was 
the Venetians' Church and their Senate-house, 
their Bible and their Charter — the Altar and 
the Throne of Venice. And as such they 
loved it, and prized it above all else, and were 
never weary of bringing into it, for its pre- 
servation, its enlargement, and its enrichment, 
the best of their thought, the best of their 
wealth, and the best of their labour. 

Let us now briefly think of some points of 
analogy that ought to hold between such a 
temple and ourselves as Christians. 

(i) A Temple is not an ordinary building. — 
A temple is not an ordinary building. It is 
a kind of building that stands by itself. Its 
architecture is different from that of other 
buildings. It is at a glance distinguishable 
from a dwelling-house, from a palace, from a 
warehouse, from a shop, from a mercantile 
exchange. It is not a building associated, like 
other buildings, with the things of earth and 



if ' 



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•i*.*.^ 




Vaya Photo 



UNION OF THE DOGE'S PALACE AND CHAPEL 

To face page i6o 



TEMPLES OF GOD 161 

time. It is associated with spiritual things. It 
is a holy building. As St. Paul says (i Cor. iii. 
17), "The temple of God is holy." Most 
temples are consecrated. But whether this is 
done or not, a certain sanctity or sacredness 
pertains to them. Their furniture and vessels 
are different from those of other buildings. 
When they are used for common purposes, as 
many temples now are in Italy, they are said to 
be secularised. An act of spoliation or viola- 
tion committed in a temple is called sacrilege. 
The very word " profane " means literally 
{pro fanum) " before the temple," " outside 
the temple," hence not separated, not sacred, 
not consecrated, but unhallowed and common. 
So Esau is said to have been a " profane " 
person, and so we speak of *' profane history." 
One of the charges made by the Jews against 
St. Paul, was (Acts xxiv. 6), that he went 
about '* to profane the temple " ; and one of 
the charges made against our Saviour was, 
that He said He could destroy the temple 
and raise it up in three days. 

A temple, then, is no ordinary building. 
And, as Christians, we ought not to be ordi- 
nary people. St. Peter writing to the strangers 
scattered abroad, says (i Peter ii. 9), "But ye 
are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an 

L 



162 VENETIAN SERMONS 

holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should 
show forth the praises of him who hath called 
you out of darkness into his marvellous light." 
John Bunyan represents Christian and Faithful 
at Vanity Fair as differing from those around 
them in three particulars — they were clothed 
with such raiment as was diverse from the 
raiment of any that traded in the fair, their 
speech was different — they spake the language 
of Canaan, and they set very light by all the 
wares that were displayed at the fair. Christians 
should be in the world, and yet not of it. They 
are called to be saints ; that is, not necessarily 
sinless ones (though they have an idea of 
sanctity altogether their own, and the work 
of sanctification is carried on in them), but 
separated ; not faultless ones, but consecrated. 
"The temple of God is holy, which temple 
ye are." 

Are we in this sense temples ? Are we 
different from others ? Are we different from 
what we would be if we were not Christians .? 
Are we different from what we were before 
we became Christians ? A real Christian is a 
man who is separated from the worldling by 
a chasm as wide as that which separates light 
from darkness, life from death. That is a 
hard thing to say, but it is true. If we are 



TEMPLES OF GOD 163 

not different from those " who have their 
portion in this life," then we are not temples. 
We may be amiable and useful for all that — 
halls of learning, schools of art, founts of 
wisdom, marts of industry, centres of com- 
merce, happy dwelling-houses, but we are not 
temples. But it is temples that we are 
expected to be. " Wherefore come out from 
among them, and be ye separate, saith the 
Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I 
will receive you." 

(2) A Temple is God's house. — As our 
text tells us, a temple is a building that 
stands in a special relation to God. It is 
God's house, the place where God hath chosen 
to put His name. When King Solomon con- 
secrated the temple he said (i Kings viii. 27) : 
" But will God indeed dwell on the earth .? 
behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens 
cannot contain thee ; how much less this house 
that I have builded .? " Solomon thus knew that 
his temple never could contain the Deity. In 
his consecration prayer, after every petition, he 
said, " Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling- 
place, and when thou hearest, forgive." At 
the same time we read that God's visible glory 
filled the house, and God said, " I have hal- 
lowed this house which thou hast built, to put 



164 VENETIAN SERMONS 

my name there for ever, and mine eyes and 
mine heart shall be there perpetually." God 
put His name there. A temple is called by 
His name. There is a sense of God's hallow- 
ing presence in it. It leads us to think of God, 
of His existence, personality, word, and will, 
and works. It helps us with the eye of faith 
to see Him who is invisible. Its very structure 
lends itself to religious thought and aspiration. 
Its peaks and points and pinnacles, its towers 
and turrets, rising into the pure air and tran- 
quil light of heaven, all direct the thoughts 
upward to God's dwelling-place above. Its 
furniture, its equipment, its pictures, its mural 
decorations in mosaic or in fresco, its music 
and services, all recall the presence of the Deity. 
The temple is the " House of God." Like 
Solomon's, like Ezra's, like St. Mark's, temples 
are built " unto the Lord." 

It is possible for a building to be a temple 
and yet not to be God's house. Our Lord 
found the temple in Jerusalem in His day " a 
house of merchandise " and " a den of thieves " ; 
and twice, once at the beginning of His 
ministry, and once at its close. He cleansed it, 
driving outside its precincts both them that 
bought and them that sold. In the seven- 
teenth century three old churches in Venice 




CHURCH OF SAN MOISE, AN "IMPIOUS BUILDING" 

To face page 164 



TEMPLES OF GOD 165 

were rebuilt, each of them receiving a very 
ornate sculptured fa9ade. These churches are 
Santa Maria Formosa, San Moise, and Santa 
Maria Zobenigo — all in the neighbourhood of 
St. Mark's Square. At first, struck only by 
their wealth of sculpture, travellers are apt to 
admire these churches. But, as Mr. Ruskin 
points out, when one looks closely at them, 
he discovers that they are " entirely destitute 
of every religious symbol, sculpture, or in- 
scription." They are really monuments to the 
glory of those Venetian families — the Capello, 
the Fini, and the Barbaro — by whose generosity 
they were rebuilt. It is the statues of members 
of these families that are set, like presiding 
deities, over their central doors and in other 
conspicuous parts of the buildings ; it is their 
exploits that the sculptures proclaim ; it is 
their names that those churches bear. Osten- 
sibly raised for God's glory, they were really 
raised for man's vanity. Therefore Mr. Ruskin 
calls them '' impious buildings . . . manifes- 
tations of insolent atheism." As temples of 
God, as temples of the living God, let us 
endeavour to keep our heart free from evil, 
ruthlessly expelling every intruder who may 
dare to cross its threshold to usurp His 
place. For " what concord hath Christ with 



166 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Belial ? or what part hath he that believeth 
with an infidel ? And what agreement hath the 
temple of God with idols ? " (2 Cor. vi. 15, 16). 

It is a significant thing that in the original 
language of our New Testament two Greek 
words are used for temple. Their meanings 
are quite distinct, though this does not appear 
in our translation, where both are simply 
translated temple. The one word is lepoi^ 
(hieron), which means sacred, from which 
we have our words hierarchy (a body of 
sacred persons), hieroglyphics, hierography 
(sacred writings), but which does not involve 
the idea of any moral quality. 'lepov (hieron) 
only expresses an external relation to God. 
'lepevg (hiereus) is a priest, a man set apart 
for a sacred purpose, but the word does not 
imply the idea that he is a holy person. It 
says nothing about character. It describes 
him ofHcially, not personally. The word lepov 
(hieron) is applied to the external buildings 
of the temple, the outer courts. 

The other word used in the New Testament 
and translated temple is mo? (naos), which has 
a very different meaning. It implies a moral 
quality. It involves the notion of holiness. 
Applied to the temple it signifies the dwelling- 
place of the Deity, the proper habitation of 



TEMPLES OF GOD 167 

God, the Holy of Holies, where was God's 
manifested presence. And that is the word 
used in my texts. Applied thus figuratively 
to us it means that we are the dwelling-places 
of God, that God hath hallowed us and called 
us by His name. " Know ye not that ye are 
the temple (i^ao?) of God, and that the Spirit 
of God dwelleth in you?" (i Cor. iii. i6). 
'' Ye are the temple (i^ao?) of the living God ; 
as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and 
walk in them ; and 1 v/ill be their God, and 
they shall be my people" (2 Cor. vi. 16). 
*' If a man love me, he will keep my words ; 
and my Father will love him, and we will 
come unto him, and make our abode with 
him" (John xiv. 23). Created in God's 
image at first, an image marred by sin, we 
are re-created in it by Christ Jesus. The 
lineaments of the divine image are again 
stamped upon us. Every regenerated, every 
converted soul is a temple of the divine 
presence. *' Ye are the temple (i^ao?) of God," 
'* Ye are the temple (vaog) of the living God." 

(3) In the Temple^ GocTs house ^ man com- 
munes with God. — When Christians gather to- 
gether in a temple it is, as defined in the Book 
of Common Prayer, "to render thanks for 
the great benefits we have received at His 



168 



VENETIAN SERMONS 




hands, to set forth His most worthy praise, 
to hear His most holy Word, and to ask those 
things which are requisite and necessary, as 
well for the body as the soul." In the temple, 
God's house, God communes with us, and 
we with Him. We have real and effective 
communion with God in praise and prayer; 
and God communes with us in answering 
our prayers, in accepting our praises, and in 
making known His character and His will in 
His most holy Word, read and preached. In 
the Jewish temple God's Word was read, ex- 
pounded, and enforced. It was read clearly, 
and the people were made to understand the 
sense. In the temples of England, and in 
those of other Protestant lands, this is also 
In those of most Roman Catholic lands 
this is not done. * But little of God's Word is 



read, and that little is in a language which 

y O I the people do not understand, and there is 

I little exposition given of it in the vernacular 

of the people. But in St. Mark's Church, up 

"to the fall of the Republic, the teaching of 

God's Word formed a principal part of the 

service, and even now the lack of it is 

partly compensated for by the fact that the 

church is itself an open Bible — a book to 

read as well as a place to worship in. In the 



TEMPLES OF GOD 169 

atrium there are in mosaic the foundation 
truths of the Old Testament, from the Crea- 
tion to the formation of the Children of Israel 
as a nation under Moses ; and in the church 
itself there are exhibited the main facts in 
our Lord's life, from His birth to His ascen- 
sion. And this teaching of the walls and 
domes addresses the eye, through which organ 
the mind is most easily reached, most en- 
duringly affected — "eyes first, hands next, 
ears last " — and the teaching is also conveyed 
in a language that is intelligible to all, that 
can be understood by all — the language of 
universal sign and symbol. In a temple, then, 
man communes with God, and God with man. 
As being temples, we ought, each of us, to 
be in fellowship with God. We ought to be 
in conscious, constant communion with Him, 
with " the Father of our spirits, that we may 
live." We ought to be instant in prayer, 
praying without ceasing, being " anxious for 
nothing, but in everything by prayer and 
supplication, with thanksgiving, making our 
requests known to God." The communication 
set up by prayer between a congregation of 
believers and God in a temple, should per- 
petually exist between God and the individual 
soul. Prayer should be a part, and the most 



170 VENETIAN SERMONS 

unceasing part, of our daily labour. Prayer is 
the breath of the soul. Its exercise ought to 
be as instinctive to us as that of physical 
respiration, as it is as essentially necessary if 
we are to be temples of the living God, God 
dwelling in us, and walking in us, He our God, 
and we His people. 

In like manner we ought to know God's 
Word, possessing it not as something external 
to us, but internal, written on the fleshy tablets 
of our hearts, as it is written on the inner 
sides of the walls of St. Mark's Church. At 
the same time we ought to exhibit God's Word. 
Our characters and lives ought to be a visible 
manifestation of God's Word and will. As 
temples this mutual fellowship ought to exist 
between God and the individual soul. 

(4) In the Temple all communion with God is 
through Christ. — " Search the scriptures," said 
our Lord to the Jews, with reference to that 
portion of the Bible they possessed, " for in 
them ye think ye have eternal life, and they 
are they that testify of me" (John v. 39); 
and, as the Emmaus disciples walked with 
Him that Sunday morning so long ago, " be- 
ginning at Moses and all the prophets, he 
expounded unto them in all the scriptures the 
things concerning himself" (Luke xxiv. 27). 



TEMPLES OF GOD 171 

Yes, all Old Testament statement and prophecy, 
and type, and symbol, and sacrifice, pointed 
forward to the coming, and work, and the 
atoning death of Jesus Christ. "O fools, and 
slow of heart to believe all that the prophets 
have spoken. Ought not Christ to have 
suffered these things and to enter into his 
glory .^^ " (Luke xxiv. 25, 26), And in the 
word read and preached in the Christian temple, 
it is God in Christ that is its theme. God 
revealing Himself in Christ — Christ, "the image 
of the invisible God" (Col. i. 15). "Lord, 
show us the Father," said St. Philip. "He 
that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," was 
our Lord's reply (John xiv. 8, 9). Christ's 
whole life was an unveiling of God to man. 
He was " the brightness of his glory, and the 
express image of his person" (Heb. i. 3). 
God is revealed in Christ as loving us : " God 
so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life " 
(John iii. 16). God in Christ is revealed 
reconciling the world unto Himself. Christ 
is the mediator between God and man — the 
daysman, who, by virtue of . His divine and 
human natures, can lay a hand upon us both. 
And in St. Mark's Church, Christ is alone 



172 VENETIAN SERMONS 

exhibited as the bond between God, the world, 
and man. There is no representation of God 
the Father in the Church, but of Christ only, 
through and by whom God works. In the 
Old Testament mosaics, in the atrium, it is 
through Christ that God creates all things, 
accepts Abel's sacrifice, instructs Noah to 
build the ark, appears to Abraham, guides 
Joseph, saves Moses, and forms the children 
of Israel into a nation. And in the New 
Testament mosaics, inside the church, it is 
God, manifest in the flesh, who is set forth 
in the incarnation, baptism, discourses, miracles, 
death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord. 
It is the image of Christ that is sculptured on 
the keystones of the chief archivolts of every 
door by which the church is entered — not 
Christ's mother, not His apostles, not His 
saints, not His blessed sacraments, but Jesus 
Christ Himself, God and Man — thus teaching 
us that it is alone through Christ that the 
temple can be entered and communication be 
held with the great self-existent One, Whose 
house it is. 

And thus should it be with us as temples. 
Christ is the bond that unites us to God. St. 
Paul says that in Christ we "are builded together 
for an habitation of God through the Spirit " 



TEMPLES OF GOD 173 

(Eph. ii. 22). What we ask in prayer, we ask 
in Christ's name and for His sake, remembering 
His promise, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my 
name, that will I do, that the Father may be 
glorified in the Son" (John xiv. 13). Every- 
thing that we say and do ought to be in Christ's 
name. " Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, 
do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving 
thanks to God and the Father by him " (Col. 
iii. 17). Christ ought to be the centre of our 
being, the key and explanation of our lives, 
Christ " who is made unto us, wisdom, and 
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemp- 
tion " (i Cor. i. 30). As Christians we should, 
as the name implies,, be seen by others to 
belong, not so much to this School or that, 
to this Church or that, to Paul, Apollos, 
or Cephas, as to Christ — bearing about with 
us, as St. Paul did, " the marks of the Lord 
Jesus" (Gal. vi. 17). Men should be able to 
take knowledge of us that we have been with 
Jesus. To us to live, ought to be, in some 
measure, for Christ Himself to live. Christ 
ought to be " magnified," that is, shown to be 
great, in our bodies, " whether it be by life 
or by death." 

Some one has said that " every Englishman 
is an eloquent witness for or against Christ 



174 VENETIAN SERMONS 

wherever he goes." The statement is true. 
Let us see to it that we witness for Christ, so 
that our lives may be what, as has been said, 
every true Christian's life should be, "a pro- 
clamation of our creed, easily intelligible, 
unquestionably sincere, and rapidly effective." 
(5) A Temple speaks of unity and fellowship. 
— A temple is not built for one person, but 
for many. It is built for multitudes, but for 
multitudes of one heart and of one mind, 
baptized into one spirit, one in Christ and in 
Christian fellowship. The one large door, with 
or without smaller side ones, suggests this. 
Mr. Ruskin, speaking of doors, says : " The 
expression of the church door should lead us, 
as far as possible, to desire at least the western 
entrance to be single, partly because no man 
of right feeling would willingly lose the idea 
of unity and fellowship in going up to wor- 
ship, which is suggested by the vast single 
entrance." Comparatively few temples, how- 
ever, have but one entrance, although, as Mr. 
Ruskin has pointed out, this was a feature of 
all early Lombardic churches. Generally a 
temple, like St. Mark's, has several doors, one 
central and principal, and the others lateral 
and subordinate. But even here all are so 
proportioned in height and width to their 




'</aya Photo 

THE ONE LARGE DOOR— SUGGESTIVE OF FELLOWSHIP 



To face page 174 



TEMPLES OF GOD 175 

relative importance, and to the size of the 
building, that they are suggestive of unity 
and fellowship. The same purpose is served 
by church bells, whether they ring out clearly 
and tunefully throughout the crowded city, or 
send their music on the breeze across fields 
and gardens in the pleasant country. 

So ought it to be with us as Christians. 
Our appearance and behaviour ought to sug- 
gest unity and fellowship. Before Christ 
came we read of those who looked for His 
appearing, that they " spake often one to 
another : and the Lord hearkened, and heard 
it, and a book of remembrance was written 
before him for them that feared the Lord, and 
that thought upon his name" (Mai. iii. i6). 
And after Christ's ascension we read that 
the apostles and disciples had all things in 
common, and that their common interest in 
each other caused the heathen to exclaim, " see 
how these Christians love one another." And 
though the Church is now divided up into many 
sections, still there ought to be, and there is, 
essential unity. There may not be intellectual 
unity, there may not be visible uniformity, 
but there ought to be unity of spirit, fellow- 
ship in Christ. We are all members of the 
same body, participating in common privileges, 



176 VENETIAN SERMONS 

incurring common obligations. We have all 
escaped a common danger, and are rejoicing 
in a common salvation. *' There is one body 
and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one 
hope of your calling ; one Lord, one faith, 
one baptism, one God and Father of all " 
(Eph. iv. 4, 5). We serve one master, Jesus 
Christ — " his servants shall serve him " (Rev. 
xxii. 3). There is unity of aim and purpose 
amid diversity of employment, for all are in 
everything obeying the master builder, all 
are "following the Lamb whithersoever he 
goeth." There is such a thing as the fellow- 
ship of saints, as the spiritual brotherhood of 
the redeemed. 

We belong to a great family, to a great 
kingdom. Our faith has a combining unify- 
ing power, for in Christ Jesus " there is 
neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor un- 
circumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
free, . . . there is neither male nor female : 
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus " (Col. iii. 1 1 
and Gal. iii. 28). "The essential bond of 
union," the late Bishop Westcott has said, " is 
not external, but spiritual. It consists not 
in one organisation, but in common principles 
of life. Its expression lies in a personal rela- 
tion to Christ, not in any outward system. 



TEMPLES OF GOD 177 

The Temple was the symbol of unity for 
the children of Israel : " Hither the tribes go 
up." Again Bishop Westcott says : '* One 
of the earliest images under which the unity 
of Christendom was described was that of 
many streams flowing from one source. The 
longer the streams flow, the greater will be 
their divergence. But the divergence is due 
to progress, and does not in any way destroy 
the unity of the waters which pass along the 
various courses. But the streams will not 
always be divided. They start from one source 
and they end in one ocean. They have been 
united outwardly, and they will again be 
united. Meanwhile the fashion of their 
currents is moulded by the country through 
which they pass, and this in turn furnishes 
the peculiar elements which they bear down 
to their common resting-place to form the 
foundations of a world to come." 

Let us, as Christians, seek to remember 
that, as temples of the living God, we ought 
to exhibit unity and fellowship. I think we 
do so in these Continental services. Here 
in Venice, in this modest temple, or, as we 
may more appropriately call it, this upper 
room, we, though comparatively few in 
number, yet belong to diflFerent nationalities, 

M 



178 VENETIAN SERMONS 

and to different sections of the Christian 
Church, and we also differ from each other 
in our intellectual views of many truths, and 
in the opinions we hold in regard to Church 
government and order, and religious rites and 
ceremonies. Yet what has brought us to- 
gether here this morning ? Is it not our 
common sense of unity and fellowship in 
Jesus Christ? Is it not to unitedly "render 
thanks " to God " for the great benefits that 
we have received at His hands, to set forth 
His most worthy praise, to hear His most 
holy Word, and to ask those things which 
are requisite and necessary, as well for the 
body as the soul " ? Let us pray that " we 
may henceforth be all of one heart and 
one soul, united in one bond of truth and 
peace, of faith and charity, and may with one 
mind and one mouth glorify God ; through 
Jesus Christ our Lord.'' 

(6) Lastly^ the Temple is a place of hallowed 
associations. — Think of the associations that 
clustered round the old Temple at Jerusalem 
for the pious Jew ! What hallowed memories 
had it not for him ! It was the symbol of 
his national existence. It was the symbol of 
the nation being God's people. How he 
loved it ! In far-off captivity his whole soul 



TEMPLES OF GOD 179 

went out to it. "Walk about Zion, and go 
round about her : tell the towers thereof. 
Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her 
palaces ; that ye may tell it to the generation 
following. For this God is our God for ever 
and ever : he will be our guide even unto 
death" (Ps. xlviii. 12-14). "One thing have 
I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after ; 
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all 
the days of my life, to behold the beauty of 
the Lord, and to inquire in his temple " (Ps. 
xxvii. 4). The Temple drew out all the 
sympathies and love of a Jew. Even in its 
desolation and destruction it was dear to him. 
*'0 God, the heathen are come into thine 
inheritance ; thy holy temple have they de- 
filed " (Ps. Ixxix. i). Yet he hoped and 
prayed for its restoration. "Thou shalt arise 
and have mercy upon Zion ; for the time to 
favour her, yea, the set time is come. For 
thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and 
favour the dust thereof" (Ps. cii. 13, 14). 

And think, too, what associations St. Mark's 
Church must have had for the Venetians of 
the old Republic ' As the sacred centre of 
the nation's life, civil, hardly less than ecclesi- 
astical, for nearly a thousand years, how many 
momentous transactions took place there ! 



180 VENETIAN SERMONS 

How many popular assemblies were held there! 

How many Doges were elected there ! How 

many Doges took the oath of allegiance to 

the Constitution, and were crowned there ! 

How many treaties and covenants were ratified 

there ! How many wars were entered upon 

after Divine guidance sought there ! How 

many Te Deums were sung there for victories 

granted to Venetian soldiers and sailors by 

the God of battles ! 

" Not a stone 
In the broad pavement, but to him who has 
An eye, an ear for the Inanimate World, 
Tells of Past Ages." 

And as it is with St. Mark's Church, so it 
must be with the cathedral churches of Eng- 
land, with the parish churches of Scotland, 
with all the city and village churches and 
chapels in the Old World, and in the New, 
where we were brought up. The temple 
is associated with our baptism ; it was there 
that we were given to God in faith by our 
parents. It is associated with the tender years 
of our boyhood or girlhood, when it was said 
to us by our parents and guardians, " Let us 
go up unto the house of the Lord." It is 
associated with marriages and with funerals, 
and with the memories of friends with whom 



TEMPLES OF GOD 181 

" we took sweet counsel together, and walked 
unto the house of God in company " (Ps. Iv. 
14). It is associated with the New Birth. " It 
shall be said this man and that man was born 
there." It is associated with visions of God, 
which, as it was with Isaiah, introduced us 
for the first time into God's service, or into 
a higher degree of it. It is associated with 
God's loving, providential dealings with us, 
with transforming experiences, with ennobling 
resolutions, with moments in our own spiritual 
history, that we would not willingly forget. 

And, as temples of the living God, we, too, 
ought to be centres of hallowed associations. 
We ought to have personal experiences of 
God's kindness to us that we look back on 
with thankfulness and gratitude. Sometimes 
we may be temples possessing hallowed asso- 
ciations for others. We may have been the 
instrument of this one's conversion, and of 
that one's comfort. Men and women may 
think of us with thankfulness to God, when 
they recall solemn periods in their histories, 
crises in their lives. They may thank God 
through time and through eternity that they 
were ever brought into contact with us. The 
Christian, as the temple of God, of the living 
God, ought thus to be one around whom 



182 VENETIAN SERMONS 

cluster the most precious memories and most 
hallowed associations. 

May God grant that all of us, and all who 
are professing Christians, may be everything 
that the figure of the text suggests. In the 
Book of the Revelation (chap. xi. i), John, 
the Evangelist, tells us that there was given 
him a reed, and that he was commanded to 
rise and measure the Temple of God, the mo?, 
God's dwelling-place, but that the court, that 
is the lepov^ which was without the Temple, he 
was told to leave out, and not to measure it, for 
it was to be trodden under foot of the Gen- 
tiles. There thus comes a day of separation, 
when God's real children are to be gathered 
together unto everlasting life and felicity, 
whilst those who are only nominally His are 
to be left out. May all of us be found on 
that day to be in deed and in truth '' temples 
OF God," "temples of the living God." 



VII 

THE STILLING OF THE 
TEMPEST 



" And a man shall be as an hiding place from 
the wind, and a covert from the tempest." 

— Isaiah xxxii. 2. 



VII 

THE STILLING OF THE 
TEMPEST 

" And he arose^ and rebuked the w'tnd^ and said 
unto the sea^ Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, 
and there was a great calmT — Mark iv. 39. 

The Jews cannot be called a seafaring people, 
though many of them were sailors and fisher- 
men. All the tribes whose possessions were 
to the west of Jordan touched the sea-board 
of the Mediterranean — Asher, Zebulun, Issa- 
char, Manasseh, Ephraim, and Dan. Of one 
of these tribes — Zebulun — Jacob, looking 
down the centuries, said, " Zebulun shall dwell 
on the shore of seas, and he shall be for an 
haven of ships," which became literally true, 
for the tribe extended from the Sea of Galilee 
to the Mediterranean, its inhabitants being 
fishermen on the one, and merchant sailors on 
the other. And of this tribe and of Issachar 
Moses said, " They shall suck of the abundance 
of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand." 

185 



186 VENETIAN SERMONS 

During the period of national glory under 
Solomon, the Jews had a merchant navy, as we 
read in i Kings ix. 26: "And king Solomon 
made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which 
is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, 
in the land of Edom ; " and again in the 
following chapter, " For the king had at sea 
a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram ; 
once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, 
bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and 
peacocks." 

And where shall we find, in the literature 
of any nation, such wise, pious, beautiful 
poetic allusions to the sea as we find in the 
Bible ? Though, compared with what we 
know, the scientific knowledge the Jews pos- 
sessed of the sea was little, and their practical 
knowledge of it was hmited, yet they knew 
more about it than all other contemporary 
nations, and their language regarding it is our 
heritage to-day. There can be no doubt that 
the miracle of the passage of the Red Sea 
made a tremendous impression on the national 
mind, and helped them to see in the ocean 
itself, and in all its changing moods, manifes- 
tations of Divine power and wisdom. " The 
sea is his, and he made it " (Ps. xcv. 5). " He 
gave to the sea his decree, that the waters 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 187 

should not pass his commandment " (Prov. 
viii. 29). " He shut up the sea with doors, 
when it brake forth" (Job xxxviii. 8). "He 
gathereth the waters of the sea together as 
an heap : he layeth up the depth in store- 
houses" (Ps. xxxiii. 7). "Thou rulest the 
raging of the sea : when the waves thereof 
arise, thou stillest them " (Ps. Ixxxix. 9). 
"They that go down to the sea in ships, that 
do business in great waters ; these see the 
works of the Lord and his wonders in the 
deep" (Ps. cvii. 23, 24). 

The very noise of the sea was to the Jew its 
praising God : " Let the sea roar and the ful- 
ness thereof" (Ps. xcviii. 7). And if the sea 
in its disquietude and dispeace was an emblem 
of the state of the wicked, "The wicked are 
like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose 
waters cast up mire and dirt " (Isa. Ivii. 20); the 
sea in its swallowing up out of sight for ever 
what is thrown into it, suggested the complete- 
ness of forgiveness : " Thou wilt cast all their 
sins into the depths of the sea " (Micah vii. 19). 
And the sea, in its length and breadth and 
depth, symbolised the universality of Christ's 
Kingdom : " He shall have dominion also from 
sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of 
the earth " (Ps. Ixxii. 8). " The earth shall be 



188 VENETIAN SERMONS 

full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the 
waters cover the sea " (Isa. xi. 9.) 

And in the New Testament Scriptures the 
references, if not to the ocean, yet to the 
inland seas of Palestine, are most interesting. 
How intimately is the Sea of Galilee associated 
with the life and the ministry of our Lord ! 
As M'Cheyne has said : — 

" How pleasant to me thy deep blue wave, 

O Sea of Galilee, 
For the gracious one who came to save, 

Hath often stood by thee. 
Fair are the lakes in the land I love, 

Where pine and heather grow, 
But thou hast loveliness above 

What nature can bestow." 

They were fishermen of Galilee whom Christ 
called to be His disciples. As He walked by 
the shore He found Simon and Andrew casting 
their nets into the sea, for they were fishers, and 
He called them, and they followed Him ; and 
going on from thence He found James and 
John, the sons of Zebedee, mending their nets, 
and them also He called, and they forsook all, 
and followed Him. The Sea of Galilee is 
associated with our Lord's parables. It was in 
a boat, that had been thrust out a little from 
the land, that He sat, and taught the people 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 189 

gathered on the shore, by means of parables — 
those of the Sower, of the Seed growing secretly, 
of the Mustard-seed, and many others. It is 
associated also with His miracles : with the first 
and second Miraculous Draughts of Fishes, 
with His Walking on the Water, with the 
Money in the Fish's Mouth, and with the 
miracle I have chosen for our study this 
morning — the Stilling of the Tempest. 

For us travellers coming from the sea-girt 
land of Britain — our wealth, our safety, our 
pride, our glory being our battleships and 
merchant fleets, and gallant sailors ; and for 
those of us who are from America, with its 
rising navy and extensive sea-board, all Bible 
references to the sea, and especially those 
that associate our Lord with it, must have a 
peculiar interest. And none the less interest 
ought they to have for us here in Venice, 
where we find ourselves to-day — a city built, 
not on the land, but in the sea, the salt sea 
wavelets breaking on the foundations of its 
lordly palaces — whose inhabitants loved the 
sea, wedding it anew every year on Ascension 
Day, by going to the Lido Port, where the 
Doge dropped into the Adriatic a ring, saying, 
" Desponsamus te Mare " (We wed thee, O 
Sea) — a city which was the England of past 



190 VENETIAN SERMONS 

centuries, with its fleets of ships, built by its 
own hands in the great Arsenal near us, for 
commerce and for war, and with its flags float- 
ing proudly on the breeze in all waters, pro- 
claiming it to be the ''undisputed Mistress 
of the Seas." 

The Venetians themselves were fond of 
Bible references to the sea, and so they have 
depicted in mosaic, in the Church of St. 
Mark, all the miracles of our Lord connected 
with it — The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 
His Walking on the Water, and the one 
which we are now considering. 

The Stilling of the Tempest is related by 
all the three writers of the Synoptic Gospels. 
Their accounts are full and varied, each one 
supplementing and completing the others. 

The scene of the miracle was, as I have 
said, the Lake of Galilee, or Gennesaret. 
The time of it was evening. Jesus had just 
completed a trying day of toil. He had 
apparently begun the day by teaching in the 
house ; then, as the people gathered in ever 
increasing numbers to hear Him, He had 
gone out of the house, and taught by the 
sea-side ; and then as the numbers still further 
increased, becoming a great multitude, He 
had entered into a ship, and taught them 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 191 

out of it. Christ, therefore, wearied with 
His labours, and desirous of being alone, and 
at rest, said to the disciples, '' Let us pass 
over unto the other side." The disciples, 
therefore, sent the multitudes away, and, 
following Jesus into the ship, they launched 
forth. 

*' But as they sailed," we read, " he fell 
asleep." St. Mark, to whose Gospel we are 
indebted for so many graphic details, adds, 
" in the hinder part of the ship, on a 
pillow." 

As the Lake of Galilee is surrounded by 
mountains, separated by deep narrow gorges, 
it is liable to be disturbed by sudden and 
violent squalls. In such a squall the little 
boat, bearing the disciples and Jesus asleep, 
was caught. It must have been a very severe 
one, for the word used by St. Matthew to 
describe it, creiar/uLos (^seismos), is, as Archbishop 
Trench says, " used very rarely indeed for 
a storm at sea. It is the technical word 
for an earthquake." This same Greek word 
has entered into our language in connection 
with the same phenomena, as, for instance, 
seismic area, seismograph and seismometer, 
instruments for measuring and registering 
earthquakes, and seismology, the science of 



192 VENETIAN SERMONS 

earthquakes. Violent, sometimes terrific, winds 
often accompany earthquakes. The most 
fierce and furious winds I ever felt were those 
that blew during the disastrous earthquakes 
that visited the Italian and French Rivieras 
in 1887. Probably it was an earthquake- 
hurricane the disciples were in. The word 
used by St. Mark and St. Luke to describe 
it conveys the idea of rain and darkness as 
well as wind. " The ship," St. Matthew says, 
" was covered with the waves." St. Mark says, 
" The waves beat into the ship, so that it was 
now full," and St. Luke adds, " And they were 
filled with water, and were in jeopardy." 

Yet, through it all, Jesus tranquilly slept. 
The disciples, knowing the lake well as fisher- 
men, and, no doubt, not unfamiliar with its 
storms, did not seem at the first brush of 
danger to have gone to Him, but to have 
done what they could themselves, unwilling 
to awaken Him. The very fact that Jesus 
was with them, must have given them a 
certain sense of security. But at last they 
could restrain themselves no longer, and their 
terrors carried them away. With many and 
varied and hurried expressions (for each Evan- 
gelist reports a different one), all indicating 
fear and dread, they awoke Christ, crying 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 193 

out, " Master, master, we perish " — '* Lord, 
save us, we perish " — " Master, carest thou 
not that we perish ? " 

Their conduct was very natural. Believing 
that Christ could help them, or they would 
never have gone to Him, they yet completely 
failed to realise their absolute safety in the 
presence of the Lord of Nature. They had 
faith, but it was weak. Their belief was mixed 
with much unbelief And so Christ first re- 
buked them, saying : *' Why are ye fearful, O 
ye of little faith ^ " — " How are ye so fearful, 
how is it that ye have no faith ? " — " Where 
is your faith ? '' — and then Christ " rose, and 
rebuked the winds and the sea," saying unto 
the sea, as St. Mark tells us, "Peace, be 
still." Archbishop Trench says : " We must 
not miss the force of that word 'rebuked,' 
preserved by all three Evangelists, and as little 
the direct address to the furious elements, 
' Peace, be still.' To regard this as a mere 
personification would be absurd — rather is 
there here, as Maldonatus truly remarks, a 
distinct tracing up of all the discords and 
disharmonies in the outward world to their 
source in a person . . . even as this person 
can be none other than Satan." 

It is curious how in all nations and amongst 

N 



194 VENETIAN SERMONS 

all peoples storms and tempests are associated 
with Satan. North of Trieste there is a great 
stretch of country, called in Italian Carso^ 
and in English Karst. The famous caves of 
Adelsberg are situated in it. This country is 
wild, rocky, desolate. It is true that heather 
and broom grows over it to relieve its gloom, 
but it is strewn thickly everywhere with grey 
rocks and boulders, and one cannot walk but 
a few yards without coming to what are called 
Dolinen^ funnel-shaped holes, some small and 
shallow, but many large and going down to 
a considerable depth. Now over this country 
blows the "Bora^ 3. north-eastern wind of terrific 
force and velocity, which upsets carts, uproots 
trees, and is felt even in the harbour of Trieste 
as a dangerous wind, often driving ships from 
their anchorage. This wind is one peculiar 
to the Karst. It takes its rise there. Indeed 
the Karst seems to create it, for when a piece 
of that wild country is improved, the wind 
diminishes, and when a piece of it is entirely 
brought under cultivation, and inhabited, the 
wind ceases altogether. Is this because, as 
the inhabitants believe, Satan, the Prince of 
the power of the air, still inhabits these dry 
desert places, seeking rest, and finding none, 
and because he disappears before man, and 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 195 

cultivation, and civilisation ? Then we all 
know how, when clergymen are passengers on 
board a ship, the sailors are apt to attribute 
to their presence, like that of Jonah, any storm 
that may arise. When in Scotland I had often 
occasion to sail up its east coast to and from 
Orkney, and sailors have often said to me, 
" We shall have a stormy passage, sir — too 
many of your profession on board/' The idea 
underlying the expression being again that 
Satan raises storms in order to destroy the 
servants of Christ. Perhaps Satan raised this 
storm on the Lake of Galilee in order to 
try and destroy Christ Himself. We are apt 
to think that after his defeat at the temptation, 
Satan ceased further to attack Christ. But 
this was not the case, for we read, "And when 
the devil had ended all the temptation, he 
departed from him for a season'' At the same 
time I do not believe, and we must guard 
against believing, that there are two powers 
in the world, one working for good and one 
for evil. Satan can only exercise a power for 
evil akin to that we can exercise — the product 
of the perverted will of a morally free agent. 

The furious elements, and Satan who stirred 
them and moved in them, heard Christ's voice, 
and obeyed. The wind and the raging of the 



196 VENETIAN SERMONS 

sea ceased, and there was " a great calm." 
The wind fell, and, a miracle in itself, the sea 
fell with it, suddenly and completely. The 
effect of this most extraordinary miracle on 
the minds of the disciples, and of those with 
them in the ship, was that they marvelled, 
and wondered, and feared exceedingly. Before 
the miracle they were afraid in the presence 
of the storm, but now they are still more 
afraid, though after a different fashion, in the 
presence of Christ. They realised Him to 
stand in a strange relationship to the elements, 
and to exercise lordship over them, " And they, 
being afraid, wondered, saying one to another. 
What manner of man is this ! for he com- 
mandeth even the winds and water, and they 
obey him." How applicable what had been 
said long before, " O Lord God of hosts, 
who is a strong God like unto thee, or to 
thy faithfulness round about thee ? Thou 
rulest the raging of the sea : when the waves 
thereof arise thou stillest them " (Ps. Ixxxix. 
8, 9). How true, also, these other words of 
the Psalmist : " They that go down to the sea 
in ships, that do business in great waters ; these 
see the works of the Lord, and his wonders 
in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth 
the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 197 

thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they 
go down again to the depths : their soul is 
melted because of trouble. They reel to and 
fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are 
at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the 
Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them 
out of their distresses. He maketh the storm 
a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. 
Then are they glad because they be quiet ; so 
he bringeth them unto their desired haven " 
(Ps. cvii. 23-30). 

The Venetian fishermen caught in sudden 
squalls on the Adriatic, and her merchant 
soldiers and sailors caught in storms as they 
sailed east and west in the Mediterranean, as 
too often would happen, must have often 
thought of this miracle, and, thereby awaken- 
ing their sleeping faith in Christ, have found 
safety and succour ; and on their safe return 
to Venice must have often studied it, as it is 
depicted, very strikingly and truthfully, on the 
north vault of the north transept of their 
church. The mosaic represents Christ, first 
calmly sleeping, as if in weakness and weari- 
ness, at one end of the boat, his arm hanging 
over its side, and almost drenched with the 
whirling waters ; and then, standing erect at 
its stern, the Lord of Nature, clothed with 



198 VENETIAN SERMONS 

omnipotence, rebuking with authority the winds 
and waters, which obey Him. 

Let us bring the matter home to ourselves. 
Though British battleships and cruisers, and 
British merchant steamships, are very different 
from the small boats that sailed the Lake of 
Galilee, still they are all exposed to storm 
and tempest, that sometimes try both the 
sailor and the ship ; and they are never safe 
from collision in fog and darkness, nor from 
being directed out of their course by unseen 
influences, to crash upon sunken reefs or 
rocky headlands. And new perils and dangers 
attend new maritime inventions and ship- 
building developments. And British sailors, 
not less than Venetian ones, should, and, I have 
no doubt, often do, find comfort and hope 
in thinking of Him " who hath measured the 
waters in the hollow of his hand " (Isa. xl. 
12); and who gave "to the sea his decree, 
that the waters should not pass his command- 
ment" (Prov. viii. 29). If there are amongst 
our sailors godless, careless men, there are 
many who are Christians, and who manfully 
and fearlessly witness for Christ on board their 
ships, and can use the words of brave Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert, in the days of Queen 
Elizabeth, who, just before his little frigate of 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 199 

ten tons went down in a storm in mid-Atlantic, 
cried out cheerfully to his companion vessel, 
" We are as near heaven by sea as by land." 

We are all sailors, are we not, on the sea 
of life ? Life is often compared to a voyage. 
It is a very common figure of speech. We 
are all sailing and voyaging. If this is so we 
ought to be sailing somewhere. We ought 
not to be drifting hither and thither. We 
ought to have a port in view. What is our 
port ? I suppose to that question most would 
answer, our port is heaven. There is no 
reason why we should not all gain that port, 
but we shall never gain it by drifting. If 
Satan is the Prince of the power of the air, 
we may be sure that he will not send us 
favouring breezes to waft us thither. No, he 
will rather raise for us contrary winds and 
violent storms, to drive us out of our course, 
or meet us with enticing Siren songs to lure 
us away from it. It is a marvellous thing 
how circumstances seem to arrange themselves 
to favour evil-doing. Italians call this una 
combinazione^ and it is amazing how often the 
expression is used to explain and excuse some 
misdeed. 

Nor shall we gain heaven by our seaman- 
ship. We cannot find it for ourselves. No, 



200 VENETIAN SERMONS 

the first thing to be done, if we would gain 
heaven, is to take Christ on board, to take 
Him with us in the ship, as did the disciples. 
He, and He alone, knows the way thither. He 
is the Way, as He is the Truth and the Life. 

And Christ does not promise us a calm, 
peaceful voyage, He only promises us a safe 
one. We are all exposed to blasts of tempta- 
tion. We often raise storms for ourselves 
by uncontrolled passion or temper, and those, 
too, to whom we not unnaturally look for 
guidance sometimes lead us astray. Some 
teachers and writers in the present day seem 
to take pleasure in seeking out all the shoals 
and reefs and sunken rocks they can find in 
the Bible, and out of it, and in running their 
own boats against them, and in inviting their 
students and readers to come out of their 
course and see the dangers they have dis- 
covered. " I suppose you know all the shoals 
and rocks in these waters ? " said a timid pas- 
senger to the captain of a vessel. "No, 
indeed," was the reply. " I do not pretend 
to know anything of the kind. But," he 
added significantly, " I know where the deep 
water lies." And that is really all we need 
to know. In Christ there is deep water — the 
deep water of His love, and of our Heavenly 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 201 

Father's love in Him. Hugh Miller tells 
a story of a boy whom some fishermen took 
with them in their boat to sea. And, when 
he got back, he told his father where he 
had been — how they sailed farther and farther 
away until the land appeared but a dark line 
in the distance, and how they let down the 
lead and coil after coil of rope was exhausted 
before it touched the bottom. And he said 
to his father, " And was not that the great 
ocean they carried me to ^ " His father said, 
" My boy, you have not seen the ocean, you 
have seen but one of its little arms ; for had 
it been the mighty ocean they had carried you 
to, you would have seen no shore and you 
would have found no bottom." And such 
is the Love of God, the Love of Christ — it 
is a sea shoreless, fathomless, infinite, divine. 
In this Love we can rest, and, whilst feeling 
the interest of all intellectual religious prob- 
lems, cease to be worried or to feel anxious 
about their solution. 

" Through the love of God our Saviour 
All will be well. 



On our Father's love relying, 
Jesus every need supplying, 
Or in living, or in dying, 
All must be well." 



202 VENETIAN SERMONS 

And having Christ with us in our ship of life, 
let us allow Him to be our pilot all the way. 
Let us put our whole trust and confidence in 
Him, feeling that, in spite of all appearance 
to the contrary, He will give us a prosperous 
end to our voyage ; that He will say to the 
troubled mind and heart, *' Peace, be still ; " 
that He will enable us to say, even amid 
storms and tempest, " Let the sea roar and 
the fulness thereof," being perfectly sure that 
He will bring us into the desired haven. 

And it is with us as with ships — the 
greatest dangers are oftenest met with at 
the beginning of our voyage. It is in-shore 
that there is danger, much more than on the 
open sea. All vessels leaving Venice carry 
pilots on board ; they can dispense with 
them as soon as they get clear of the shal- 
lows and sandbanks, the shoals and islands 
that close in this city. And how often 
have we seen the sea rough and stormy near 
the shore, whilst away out in the offing it 
would be lying like a silver mirror, reflecting 
the calm and peace of heaven ! So it is in 
youth that we are most exposed to dangers 
and difficulties, and many, too many, never 
get fairly started in life at all, but become 
wrecks at the very harbour mouth. But once 



THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST 203 

good habits are formed, and once we get 
established in the Christian life, the voyage is 
comparatively safe and pleasant. 

Lastly, when a ship arrives at the port, it is 
not the end of the ship, it is but the end of 
the voyage. Therefore, death to us is not the 
end of life, it is only the completion of our 
earthly voyage. As the late Bishop of Lincoln 
has said, " Death is not an end, but an event 
in life — indeed, a new start for an extended 
knowledge and a purer love ; '' or as the late 
Bishop of Durham puts it : " Physical death 
touches only the circumstances of our present 
existence ; dissolution is the condition of a 
new form of life, but not an interruption, 
still less the close of life." 

Yes, we shall be for ever sailing, voyaging, 
" Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee ; " 
only, there will be no more storms and tem- 
pests, nor sunken reefs, nor dangerous head- 
lands, for, so far as the possibility of shipwrecks 
is concerned, there will be *' no more sea " (Rev. 
xxi. i) ; for the sea " before the throne " is " a 
sea of glass, like unto crystal" (Rev. iv. 6). 



VIII 
THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 



" Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ; shout, 
O daughter of Jerusalem : behold, thy King 
Cometh unto thee : he is just, and having salva- 
tion ; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon 
a colt, the foal of an ass." — Zech. ix. 9. 




V ' 




M 



THE PROPHET ZACCARIAH 



To face page 206 



VIII 
THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 

" And the multitudes that went before^ and 
that followed^ cried^ sayings Hosanna to the son of 
David : Blessed is he that cometh in the name of 
the Lord !''—y[kTr, xxi. 9. 

To-day is what is called in the Church's 
Calendar Palm Sunday, when the minds of 
Christians throughout the world are being 
very generally directed to that great event 
in our Lord's life — His Triumphal Entry into 
Jerusalem. I have, therefore, chosen it for our 
morning's study, that we may thus enter into 
fellowship with our fellow-Christians every- 
where ; and I pray that the consideration of 
it may be profitable to us. 

The festival of Palm Sunday was instituted 
in 877 by Pope John VIII., and was soon after- 
wards introduced into the Venetian Church 
Calendar. Not that Venice in such matters 

commonly followed the example of the Roman 

207 



208 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Catholic Church. Far from that, she had her 
own Church Calendar, just as she had her 
own Bible (the Vetus Itala^ not the Vulgate) 
and her own Church ceremonial, the Aqui- 
leian rite, not the Roman one. And her 
calendar was remarkable in having, like the 
Church of England Calendar of to-day, festi- 
vals mainly in remembrance of great events 
in the life of our Lord ; but no common 
Saints'-days. 

As commemorating one of these great events. 
Palm Sunday was always carefully observed in 
Venice, and observed in a way peculiar to the 
Republic. Before, therefore, entering upon the 
study of the subject itself, I should like briefly 
to refer to some of the peculiarities in the 
Venetian observance of it. It is rather strange 
that the pigeons of the Piazza of St. Mark are 
a memento of Palm Sunday. At the close of 
the religious service in the Church of St. Mark 
there was a procession in which the Doge, 
the Senators, and the Magistrates took part, 
each one carrying blanched and plaited palm 
branches, such as those prepared and used on 
the Riviera at the present time. That of the 
Doge, however, was a large artificial one, with 
leaves made of gold, silver, and silk. When 
the procession arrived before the main door of 



THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 209 

the church, it halted, and the choir sang the 
hymn beginning — 

*' All glory, praise, and honour 
To Thee, Redeemer King." 

Whilst this was being sung the sacristans 
ascended to the open gallery that runs above 
the doors, where now are the bronze horses, 
and let loose a flock of various kinds of birds, 
amongst which were many pigeons in pairs. 
These pigeons were weighted with cartocci 
(cartouches) tied to their feet. Meanwhile the 
Piazza of St. Mark, the great open-air drawing- 
room of Venice, was filled with thousands of 
sight-seers, many of whom had come to the 
city for the occasion, all waiting to enjoy the 
sport, and, if possible, to catch the birds. As 
these flew heavily above the laughing, leaping, 
roaring, rushing crowd, many, of course, were 
caught, but not a few managed to elude every 
grasp, and to find a safe asylum among the 
cupolas and columns and carvings of St. Mark's 
Church. For those that thus escaped the 
church became a " sanctuary," and sanctuary 
privileges were accorded them. For each fes- 
tival three flocks of birds were provided, so 
thrice there was the grand flutter of wings 
and weighted limbs overhead, and thrice the 

o 



210 VENETIAN SERMONS 

excitement and amusement of the chase. In 
the course of a few years the birds, whose life 
had been given them for a prey, began to mul- 
tiply, and to become a feature of the Church 
and Piazza. It was then that the Government 
declared them to be sacred, and dedicated them 
to the Evangelist whose protection they had 
originally sought. Further, it decreed that 
they were no longer to be included in the 
flocks of birds that were let loose for the 
amusement of the people on Palm Sundays. 
A daily supply of corn was assigned them out 
of the public granaries, and the Froveditori di 
Gram were charged with the duty of seeing 
that it was regularly given. It was also decreed 
to be a serious offence to molest them in any 
way, and that any one caught so doing should 
be liable to a fine. 

Inside the church there is another memento 
of Palm Sunday, in the shape of a beautiful 
and impressive mosaic of the incident this day 
commemorates. It is one of the oldest in the 
church, having been put up in the eleventh 
century. It occupies a very conspicuous posi- 
tion, on the eastern side of the vault of the 
south transept, thus being easily seen by most 
worshippers in the church. I may here say 
that mosaics which, like this, make known 



« c ^ • 



THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 211 

Christ's power and greatness have all been 
assigned prominent places in St. Mark's. The 
old Venetians did not adore a dead Christ. 
The Venetians' Christ was a living Saviour, 
able and willing and waiting to help. 

The mosaic of the Triumphal Entry is very 
quaint and very striking. Christ, the central 
figure, is represented riding into Jerusalem on 
a white ass, on which He is seated not astride, 
but sideways. In His left hand He holds a 
scroll — the Book of the Law, and with His 
right hand raised He bestows His blessing. 
Behind Him are the disciples, and a m..ultitu'de 
of people. Before Him is the city ^ate, out-of 
which people are coming to meet Him, waving 
palm branches. Men, women, and children 
around are paying Him the royal honour of 
spreading their garments in the way, whilst 
some, having climbed up into palms and other 
evergreen trees, are cutting down branches and 
strewing them on the road. 

The Triumphal Entry was, as I have said, 
an event of very great moment in the life 
of our Lord. It must have impressed itself 
deeply on the minds of those who witnessed 
it, for it is recorded by all the four Evan- 
gelists. And this fourfold account of it has 
been given to us that we, too, might realise 



212 VENETIAN SERMONS 

its importance, and be impressed by it, as we 
have seen the Venetians were, in common, I 
believe, with the early Christians. 

It occurred at a critical moment in our 
Lord's life. The period of His earthly sojourn 
among men was drawing to a close. The time 
of His humiliation was almost ended. He 
was about to enter into His glory, although 
between this incident and His Ascension there 
lay the Agony and Betrayal, the Crucifixion 
and Burial — events to which, however. He 
looked unflinchingly forward. It was a pre- 
lude ,to,the Passion, and probably was a means 
'of preparing flim for it. 

But looking 'back on His past life, how little 
success seems to have attended His efforts to 
reveal Himself to His countrymen as their 
Messiah ! Truly " He was despised and re- 
jected of men." " He came unto his own, 
and his own received him not." But now 
new proofs of His Messiahship thickened, as 
if He longed that the scales might fall from 
His countrymen's eyes, that the veil might 
be removed from their hearts, and that they 
might accept Him as their Saviour before it 
was too late — oh, that they might know the 
things that belonged to their peace before that 
they were hid from their eyes, as they were 



THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 213 

soon to be. Indeed this was the last great 
offer Christ made to them of Himself as their 
Saviour. 

In the Psalms, and especially in the book 
of the prophet Zechariah, it was foretold of 
the Messiah that He would, as a King, make 
a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The prophet 
Zechariah wrote, " Rejoice greatly, O daughter 
of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ; 
behold, thy King cometh unto thee. He is 
just, and having salvation." He was to be 
just, and yet to bring pardon to His rebellious 
subjects ; Righteousness and Mercy were to be 
united in His person and government. Still 
He was to be a humble King — "lowly, and 
riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal 
of an ass ; " although we must remember 
that into this lowly action there entered no 
element of littleness or meanness — nothing, 
indeed, inconsistent with regal dignity. For 
the ass in the East is not the despised animal 
it is with us. It is in itself, and is regarded 
as, a very noble creature. To ride on an ass 
was often a thing of honour and distinction. 
When Ziba, the servant of Mephibosheth, met 
King David (2 Sam. xvi. 12) with a couple 
of asses saddled, and when David asked him, 
"What meanest thou by these .^^ " he answered, 



214 VENETIAN SERMONS 

" The asses be for the king*s household to ride 
on." Governors and magistrates, prophets and 
judges, and persons of distinction rode on white 
asses (Judges v. lo). 

So likewise did Oriental princes. And it 
is a curious link of Venice with the East, 
that the Doge and his Senators, and the Pro- 
curators of St. Mark's Church, the noblest 
class of men in Venice, from amongst whom 
the Doge was invariably chosen, rode on white 
asses. There was nothing discreditable, then, 
in our Lord choosing an ass to ride on. On 
the contrary, had our Lord ridden on an horse 
it would have been discreditable, for the horse 
is, in the prophets, as Canon Liddon has said, 
" the symbol of worldly power." " I will cut 
off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse 
from Jerusalem," is the prediction of the fall 
of a worldly monarchy. 

We may notice that this is the only instance 
in which we read of Christ riding. He was 
poor, and so He walked, walked even to 
weariness. " Jesus, therefore, being wearied 
with his journey, sat thus on the well." But 
now, as a Prophet and as a Prince, He rode 
regally and yet humbly. 

In the fact that He had not an ass of His 
own, but had to borrow one, there is also a 



THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 215 

manifestation of combined humility and glory 
— of humility, in His being under the neces- 
sity of borrowing ; of glory, in the manner in 
which He did it, for He did it as a King : 
" Go into the village," He said, " and straight- 
way ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with 
her : loose them, and bring them unto me ; '* 
and, anticipating any scruples that might arise 
in the minds of the disciples. He added, "and if 
any man say ought unto you, ye shall say. The 
Lord hath need of them ; and straightway he 
will send them." Yes, Christ borrowed as a 
King — " The Master," He who is Lord of all, 
to whom belongs every beast of the field, and 
the cattle upon a thousand hills. He " hath 
need of them." Their owner would recognise 
himself to be, what each one really is, only 
the steward of what he possessed, down even 
to the beast he rode on. " Ye are not your 
own, for ye are bought with a price, therefore 
glorify God in your body and your spirit, 
which are God^s." Of course there is nothing 
improbable in the supposition that the owner 
of the ass and foal may have known Jesus, may 
even have been His disciple. He evidently 
knew to whom the term " Lord," used by the 
disciples, applied ; and he recognised Christ's 
lordship over himself and over his possessions. 



216 VENETIAN SERMONS 

And now, as St. Matthew wrote especially 
to convince his countrymen that Jesus was the 
Messiah of Old Testament type and prophecy, 
he adds, '' All this was done that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, 
saying, Tell ye the daughter of Zion, behold, 
thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting 
upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." 
Zechariah speaks of two animals. Why two ? 
Probably because our Lord wished to ride on 
an animal on which never man had ridden, 
an unbroken colt, which would go quietly 
only if its mother walked beside it. 

Christ thus offered Himself to the Jews 
as their Messiah, their King, and Saviour, 
and the exact fulfilment of the prophecy of 
Zechariah, which was one much regarded by 
the Jews, ought to have persuaded them that 
Jesus was the Christ. As a result, the dis- 
ciples were confirmed in their belief in Jesus 
as the Messiah, and many others were con- 
verted to that belief. 

The disciples, having brought the ass and 
the colt, we read, '*put on them their clothes, 
and they set him thereon." By doing this 
they publicly acknowledged Christ's Messiah- 
ship, as did also the owner of the animals 
by giving them up for Christ's use. And a 



THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 217 

great multitude — " a very great multitude'' — 
also hailed Him as the Messiah and paid Him 
homage as their King ; for they, too, stripped 
off their garments and strawed them in the 
way, that Jesus might pass on as a King and as 
their King. We have illustrations in the Old 
Testament Scriptures of similar recognitions 
of sovereignty : for example, in 2 Kings ix. 13, 
we read, when Jehu was raised to the throne, 
" Then the people hasted, and took every man 
his garment, and put it under him on the top 
of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, 
Jehu is king ! " We have in modern times 
the act of Sir Walter Raleigh, who stripped 
himself of his rich cloak, and spread it over a 
muddy pool, that Queen Elizabeth might pass 
on dry-shod. " Others also," we read, " cut 
down branches from the trees, and strawed 
them in the way." This, too, was a recogni- 
tion of Christ as a King, and as a triumphant 
King, as a conquering hero, " leading captivity 
captive." The palm, the symbol of victory 
over death, was most appropriately used in 
the case of Him who conquered death for us. 

Again, we read that " the multitudes that 
went before, and that followed, cried, saying, 
Hosanna to the son of David : Blessed is 
he that cometh in the name of the Lord ; 



218 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Hosanna in the highest." These words em- 
phatically show that those who used them 
accepted Jesus as their Messiah. " Hosanna ! 
Save now ! Help now ! Lord, thou son of 
David, help now ! succour now ! " 

Lastly, as all this acclamation, and this 
cutting down of branches of trees, were 
associated with the Feast of Tabernacles, the 
most happy and joyous of the Jewish feasts, 
there was here a further recognition that Jesus 
was the Messiah to whose joyous coming all 
these feasts pointed forward. 

But while there was this general and hearty 
recognition of Jesus as the Messiah on the 
part of the great multitude, there was also on 
the part of some an open rejection of Him. 
" Some of the Pharisees from among the 
multitude said unto him. Master, rebuke thy 
disciples. And he answered and said unto 
them, I tell you that, if these should hold 
their peace, the stones would immediately 
cry out." 

And now let us gather up a few of the 
lessons which this great event in the life of 
our Lord is fitted to teach us. 

(a) It teaches us that Jesus is Christ. — From 
our consideration of it we may say what 
Philip said to Nathanael : " We have found 



i 




,>*^^ ^^ 



,\ 



-^1 



THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 219 

him, of whom Moses in the law, and the 
prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the 
son of Joseph." In Him all Old Testament 
Messianic prophecies found their fulfilment. 
Jesus, therefore, is Christ, the Sent of God, 
the Anointed of God, the Saviour of the 
world, our only Saviour — " Neither is there 
salvation in any other : for there is none 
other name under heaven given among men, 
whereby we must be saved," but our om- 
nipotent Saviour, able and willing " to save 
them to the uttermost that come unto God 
by him." 

(^) // teaches us that whilst Jesus is our 
Saviour^ He is also our King. — Jesus makes 
tremendous claims upon us. He demands 
our homiage, our obedience, our worship, 
ourselves. " My son, my daughter, give me 
thy heart." When Christ comes. He comes 
to reign. Canon Liddon, referring to the 
claim our Lord made to the use of the ass 
and its colt, says : " This claim implies our 
Lord's Divinity. But it was a very modest 
claim compared to others He made on those 
who heard Him. To ask for a man's cattle 
is little compared with asking for his affec- 
tions, for his thoughts, for his endeavours, 
for the surrender of his will, for the sacrifice 



2^0 VENETIAN SERMONS 

of his liberty, for the abandonment, if need 
be, of all earthly happiness, and of life itself." 
Yet this is the claim which Jesus Christ, as our 
Sovereign as well as our Saviour, makes. 

(<:) // teaches us that Jesus comes at times ^ 
offering Himself very specially to us as our 
Saviour. — On this occasion, by so publicly 
and conspicuously fulfilling outstanding Old 
Testament Messianic prophecies, which weighed 
much with His countrymen. He offered Him- 
self in a very special manner to them as their 
Saviour. And Jesus does this still. He 
comes to us very specially at times in His 
providential dealings with us, at sundry times 
and in divers manners, pressing His claims 
upon us, as our Saviour, and tenderly begging 
our acceptance of Him. " Behold, I stand 
at the door, and knock : if any man hear 
my voice, and open the door, I will come 
in to him, and will sup with him, and he 
with me." 

(^) It teaches us that sooner or later Jesus 
comes offering Himself to us as our Saviour for 
the last time. — As we have seen. He dealt so 
with His countrymen on this occasion. With 
this offer of Himself, He closed their day of 
grace. Having made it, the " Master of the 
house " rose up, and " shut the door." And 



THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 221 

Christ acts in this way still. In the history 
of individuals and nations there comes a day 
when for the last time Jesus presses Himself 
upon them as their Saviour. No one knows 
when that time may come. Hence the call 
to accept Him at once, without hesitancy or 
delay. " Behold, now is the accepted time ; 
behold, now is the day of salvation." " Where- 
fore, as the Holy Ghost saith. To-day, if ye 
will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." 

(e) It teaches us, lastly, that Christ is ever, in 
the experience of those to whom He comes, a 
savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. — 
On this occasion many individuals accepted 
Him. He was to many a savour of life 
unto life. But many also rejected Him, 
and the Jews did so as a nation. Hence 
our Saviour's pathetic lamentation, as the view 
of the city burst upon Him from the slopes 
of Olivet. " If thou hadst known, even thou, 
at least in this thy day, the things which belong 
unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes/' Let us see to it that we are not 
amongst those who reject Him, " who draw 
back unto perdition, but of them that believe 
to the saving of the soul." Let us see to it 
that Christ is in our experience " a savour 
of life unto life," that in Him we go from 



VENETIAN SERMONS 

strength to strength, from life to life. Thomas 
Carlyle, in his Sartor Resartus, speaks of life as 
a succession of falls. It may be so when led 
out of Christ ; it never can be so when led in 
Him. No man led a more strenuous life, a 
more suffering life, than the Apostle Paul — 
" in labours more abundant, in stripes above 
measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths 
oft " — and yet what is his view of it ? In old 
age, looking back on it, he feels himself to 
be a conqueror, and exclaims, like a Roman 
General enjoying a triumph, along whose paths 
flowers were strewn and sweet spices scattered 
and incense burned, " Now thanks be unto 
God, which always causeth us to triumph in 
Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his 
knowledge by us in every place." It is thus 
possible for us to make our lives what our 
Lord's was on this occasion — a triumphal 
procession — not only in spite of trials and 
sufferings, but by means of such experiences. 
For what says the Apostle Paul in another 
place .f^ "For thy sake we are killed all the 
day long ; we are accounted as sheep for 
the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we 
are more than conquerors through him that 
loved us." Triumphing thus in, and with, 
Christ here below, we shall share with Him 




GROUP OF BORDIGHERA PALMS 



To face page 222 



THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY 223 

the fruits of victory in His kingdom above, 
having a place amongst that " great multitude, 
which no man could number, of all nations, 
and kindreds, and people, and tongues," who 
stand " before the throne, and before the 
Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms 
in their hands." " To him that overcometh 
will I grant to sit with me in my throne, 
even as I also overcame, and am set down 
with my Father in his throne." 



IX 



THE ASCENSION 



" Who being the brightness of his glory, and 
the express image of his person, and upholding 
all things by the word of his power, when he 
had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the 
right hand of the Majesty on high." 

— Hebrews i. 3. 



IX 

THE ASCENSION 

*' While they beheld^ he was taken up ; and a 

cloud received him out of their sight T 

— Acts i. 9. 

The subject of our study this morning is 
one common to all Christendom to-day — 
namely, the Ascension, and I purpose dealing 
with it almost exclusively from the standpoint 
of the old Venetians. For if there was one 
event in the life of our Lord which, more 
than any other, seems to have impressed their 
minds, and to which they assigned a peculiar 
importance, it was the Ascension. 

Thus, one of the first churches they built in 
Venice was in commemoration of this event. It 
was called the Church of the Ascension. They 
built it, also, not in any out-of-the-way place, 
but in the very centre of the city's life. It 
stood facing St. Mark's Church at the opposite 
end of the Piazza, which was then a green 
garden. It was in existence down to recent 
times, having been demolished only in 1824, 

227 



228 VENETIAN SERMONS 

to make room for the extension of the Royal 
Palace that completes the quadrangle. It 
gave its name to all the little calli that 
converge towards the Piazza of St. Mark at 
that western end, and, as they still bear these 
names, they serve to recall its existence and 
its site. They are called Calk Prima delP 
Ascensione ; Calk second a delP Ascensione ; Ramo 
Primo^ and Ramo Secondo dell' Ascensione ; and 
Calk Larga delP Ascensione. 

Again, the greatest, the grandest, the most 
imposing, and the most impressive of all the 
festivals in the Venetian calendar was that of 
the Ascension. It was on Ascension Day that 
the Doge, after solemn service in St. Mark's 
Church, showed himself to the people in all 
his regal magnificence, and, accompanied by 
his red-robed Senators and Councillors, by 
the Ambassadors of foreign States, and by 
all in authority, embarked on the Bucintoro 
(so called from two words buza^ a ship, and 
oro^ gold, and therefore described by an old 
chronicler as " the most magnificent vessel that 
was perhaps ever constructed in the world, 
completely gilded, but with gold without 
alloy "), and rowed, not by common sailors, 
but by 320 of the young nobles of Venice, 
four at each of its eighty oars, and, followed 



THE ASCENSION 229 

by thousands in boats and gondolas, set out 
to wed the Adriatic. Arrived at the Port 
of Lido, a solemn and significant prayer was 
first offered that God would calm the ocean's 
troubled waters ; and then that He would calm 
their troubled hearts, and in the right way, by 
removing sin's disturbing element, the petition 
being, *' Purge me with hyssop, and I shall 
be clean ; " after which the Doge, rising from 
his throne, dropped from the stern of the 
vessel a golden ring into the sea, pronouncing 
at the same time the words, " Desponsamus te 
Mare ! in signum veri perpetuique dominii Sere- 
nissimte Republic a Venetde^'' (We wed thee, O Sea ! 
in token of the true and perpetual dominion 
of the Most Serene Venetian Republic). 

It was on Ascension Day, too, that there 
was opened in St. Mark's Square, which was 
filled up with booths for the occasion, the 
great annual fair of Venice, which was one 
of the greatest fairs in the world at that 
time. At it everything was to be seen and 
to be bought. It was a great industrial mart. 
As an old chronicler says : " There were dis- 
played the finest productions of the East, with 
our own, which vied with them in excellence." 
It was a great art exhibition, for, as this 
same chronicler says : " Our painters and 



230 VENETIAN SERMONS 

sculptors regarded it as the beginning of their 
glory, as the road that conducted them to 
fame." It lasted first for eight, but latterly 
for fifteen days, and was attended by travellers 
and merchants, by seekers after the curious, 
and by admirers of the beautiful, from all 
parts of the world. 

Then on Ascension Day, and on many 
succeeding days, as long as the fair lasted, 
figures of the Magi came out of the Clock 
Tower on to the platform in front of the 
Infant Christ in Mary's arms, and, passing 
before Christ, worshipped Him, presenting 
their gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh — 
a pictorial lesson to those rich traders in the 
Piazza below, that all their wealth should be 
consecrated to Him, and one which has been 
annually inculcated after the same fashion 
down to the present time. 

Lastly, in St. Mark's Church the representa- 
tion in mosaic of the Ascension occupies the 
place of honour. It fills the whole central 
dome — the chief dome of the Church — and 
it is depicted with a wonderful amplitude of 
thought, and beauty of design and arrange- 
ment. In its utmost height there is portrayed 
the risen and glorified Saviour, who, seated on 
a rainbow, and with a rainbow under His feet. 



THE ASCENSION 231 

and enshrined in a mandora which is borne by 
angels, rises into the blue, starry vault of 
heaven, " ascending up where he was before,' 
far above all suns and worlds. In His left hand 
He holds a scroll, the written Word ; whilst 
with His right He blesses the apostles, evan- 
gelists, and disciples, who are gazing upward at 
Him from amongst the trees of Olivet below. 
Under the apostles' feet, in the wall spaces 
between the windows of the cupola, are sixteen 
figures, representing sixteen virtues, each bear- 
ing a scroll with a benediction inscribed upon 
it. Mr. Ruskin thinks that they have a special 
adaptation for sea life, and that there is one 
for every wind that blows. Then in the 
spandrels below the cupola are the four 
evangelists in the act of writing their Gospels, 
whilst under their feet are the four rivers of 
Paradise, Gihon, Euphrates, Tigris, and Pison, 
now transformed for us into the four streams 
of the Gospel, carrying new life and new fertility 
into the four corners of the globe, undoing the 
curse of the Fall, and making all things new. 

Now, why was it that the old Venetians 
centred their minds thus on the Ascension } 
Why did they thus so conspicuously represent 
it, and connect it with so many and so important 
national works and festivities } In seeking an 



232 VENETIAN SERMONS 

answer to such questions, I have no doubt we 
shall ourselves be helped to understand the 
subject better, and to derive profit from it. 

God teaches us by events, as well as by 
words — by historic facts, as well as by historic 
utterances. And in the Ascension both these 
modes of teaching are united. We have the 
great event of the Ascension, we have the words 
then spoken by Christ and by the two men 
in white. The Venetians grasped both event 
and words, and the lessons they convey. The 
marvellousness of the event must have struck 
them — a man like themselves passing bodily, 
visibly, upward into the blue sky, connecting 
earth with heaven, this life with another life, 
suggesting continuity of life, suggesting life 
in another state, and in another place. 

It was a unique event in the history of man, 
in the history of the world. There was some- 
thing mysterious in the departure of Enoch. 
" Enoch walked with God : and he was not ; 
for God took him." There was something 
mysterious about the departure of Moses. 
He " went up," we read, " from the plains of 
Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top 
of Pisgah ... his eye was not dim, nor his 
natural strength abated," and he never returned. 
God buried him, and " no man knoweth of his 




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THE ASCENSION CUPOLA 



To face page 232 



THE ASCENSION 233 

sepulchre unto this day." There was some- 
thing mysterious about the departure of 
Elijah, for whom there appeared a chariot 
of fire and horses of fire, which carried him 
up in a whirlwind into heaven. But Christ's 
departure differed from all of these. The 
phrases used to describe it are, *' He was 
received up into heaven." " He was parted 
from them, and carried up into heaven." 
'* He was taken up, and a cloud received him 
out of their sight." But none of these phrases 
are meant, we believe, to imply that some 
agency was necessary for Christ's bodily eleva- 
tion. He rose by His own will and power. 
He was *' taken from them," but He " went 
up," to use the phrase in the book of the 
Acts of the Apostles. He went in the fulness 
of His power. He went as a King. " Lift 
up your heads, O ye gates ; and be ye lift up, 
ye everlasting doors ; and the King of glory 
shall come in." He went as a conquering 
King — His battles over. His victories won ; 
His life of humiliation, of conflict, of suffering, 
and of death for us sinners for ever ended; His 
life of glory as our mediatorial King entered 
upon. "Thou hast ascended on high, thou 
hast led captivity captive : thou hast received 
gifts for men ; yea, for the rebellious also. 



234 VENETIAN SERMONS 

that the Lord God might dwell among 
them." 

This, then, was the aspect of Christ's person 
that struck the Venetians as revealed in the 
Ascension. They seem to have realised Him 
as a victorious sovereign. It is as a King that 
He is depicted in the height of the Ascension 
cupola. The rainbow He sits on is His throne. 
The rainbow beneath His feet is His footstool. 
The rainbow is the symbol of reconciliation, of 
God's anger being turned away, of His being 
propitious unto us, and so here it suggests 
Christ's finished propitiatory work by which 
He became our mediatorial King. The scroll 
in His hand is the law and word of His king- 
dom. And it was as a King that He claimed, as 
He ascended, universal sovereignty, a kingdom 
coextensive with all kingdoms, embracive of all 
kingdoms : " All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth." It was as a King that 
He laid His mandate upon His disciples, " Go 
ye therefore and disciple all nations" — go and 
tell the inhabitants of the round world that I 
am their Sovereign, and make them My subjects 
by teaching them to know and observe all 
things, "whatsoever I have commanded you." 
And it was as a King that He promised to be 
with them even when departing from them : 



"A E 




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THE iMAGI WORSHIPPING CHRIST 



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THE ASCENSION 235 

*' And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world. Amen." 

In harmony, then, with this idea all the 
ceremonies and festivities of Ascension Day 
suggested sovereignty and conquest. The 
vessel in which the Doge sailed to wed the 
Adriatic Sea was not only a wedding coach, 
it was a naval car of victory, and the wedding 
itself was " in token of a true and perpetual 
dominion." The whole ceremony was a dis- 
play of the naval supremacy of Venice as Queen 
of the Adriatic, as Mistress of the Seas. 

In like manner the great fair in St. Mark's 
Square was an exhibition of the commercial 
supremacy of Venice, whose flag, in these 
centuries, like that of England to-day, was 
to be seen floating proudly in all waters. And 
the ceremony of the Magi presenting their gifts 
to the Infant Christ on the platform of the 
Clock Tower, which then, as now, never 
failed to draw the eyes of all in the Piazza 
below, served to remind them that Christ, who 
went from the world as a King, also came into 
the world as a King. He was born, not a 
prince, but a King. The keynote struck at 
His coming into the world was the same as 
that struck at His going out of it. He entered 
the world as a King, He was recognised as 



236 VENETIAN SERMONS 

such, even whilst lying a helpless babe in the 
manger at Bethlehem, and He left it as a 
King, in the fulness of His glorified humanity, 
as He ascended from the Mount of Olives. 

Great facts are not given to us, great truths 
are not revealed to us, only for intellectual 
enjoyment, or as matters of contemplation and 
speculation, nor are they at all given to us 
as " moral opiates " and " spiritual charms." 
They are all given to us, to use the expres- 
sive words of the late Bishop Westcott, " for 
the inspiration of our whole being, and for 
the hallowing and bracing of every power out- 
ward and inward with which we are endowed, 
for use in the busy field of common duty." 
Yes, they are given to rouse us, to guide us, 
to sustain us, to help us onward and upward. 

And thus it is with the great fact of 
the Ascension. And this idea the practical 
Venetians seized and embodied ceremonially 
and pictorially. 

In the display of naval and commercial 
supremacy on Ascension Day there was an 
acknowledgment that all authority, national 
and individual, comes from Christ. All is 
a delegated authority. An acknowledgment 
which the Republic made in so many words 
when it replied to the pretensions of Pope 



THE ASCENSION 237 

Paul v., through its great counsellor and 
statesman, Fra Paolo Sarpi : " We acknow- 
ledge no superior in civil matters but Him 
who has given us charge of the affairs of 
Venice." And all authority should return to 
Him, should be used for His glory, as the 
representation of the Magi offering their gifts 
seems to have been designed to suggest. 

But this idea of receiving from Christ that 
one may give to Him again, the Venetians 
brought out specially in the Ascension cupola. 
If the kingship of Christ is there conspicuously 
portrayed, so is also the subject position of 
man. If, on the one hand, there is brought 
out Christ's right to rule, on the other hand 
there is brought out man's obligation to obey. 
And, therefore, the " two men in white," who 
are depicted as appearing in the midst of the 
apostles, address them in the words which are 
inscribed round the dome : *' Ye men of Galilee, 
why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? This 
same Christ, the Son of God, as He goes away, 
taken up from you, shall in like manner come. 
Arbiter of the world, invested with judgment, 
to give to men their just deserts." The words 
recalled the apostles from surprised contempla- 
tion to active work for Christ. In standing 
gazing upward after their Master, they were 



238 VENETIAN SERMONS 

in danger of forgetting His parting command 
to go and work for Him. The Ascension was 
not given them as a doctrine to speculate about, 
but as a fact and a power to influence their 
lives. And the angels' warning was heeded, 
and the lesson was learned. And this is what 
the Venetians designed to bring out by repre- 
senting the four evangelists, in the spandrels 
of the cupola, engaged busily writing their 
respective Gospels. St. Matthew sits with his 
pen in his hand, and on the open pages of his 
book are the words : " Liber generationis lesu 
Christi filii David'''' (The book of the generation 
of Jesus Christ, the son of David). St. Mark 
has written the opening words of his Gospel : 
^^ Initium Evangelii lesu Christi Filii Dei''' (The 
beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God), when he pauses, and, placing his 
elbow on the open page, rests his head on his 
hand which holds his quill, as if engaged in 
profound thought. St. Luke has written the 
four verses that form the preface to his Gospel, 
and, turning the page, has begun his Gospel 
itself with the words : " Fuit in diehus Herodis^ 
regis ludea^ sacerdos quidam nomine Zacharias " 
(There was in the days of Herod, the king 
of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias). 
St. John, like St. Mark, has paused as if 



ST. LUKE WRITING HIS GOSPEL 



To face page 238 



THE ASCENSION 239 

struck with a sense of the awful mystery of 
that life he was about to relate, when he had 
put down the sublime words with which he 
begins to tell it : '' In principio erat Verhum^ et 
Verhum erat apud Deum^ et Deus erat Verhum " 
(In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was 
God). 

The sixteen Virtues on the cupola walls 
teach the same lesson. They declare the life 
of Christians to be one of active virtuous 
doing, a life of holy activity for their King. 
As His subjects, they must serve Him in 
holiness and righteousness all the days of 
their lives. And the Virtues also show us 
how the Venetians expected this to be at- 
tained. As practical men, they clearly saw 
that a vague desire to be good and to do 
good was inadequate to the task. As prac- 
tical men, they saw that their King was to be 
served, and the world was to be benefited, by 
each one applying himself diligently to the 
cultivation and practice of clearly defined 
individual virtues, even though it might be 
by the practice of only one at a time. 
The Virtues, as catalogued by the Venetians, 
are — Temperance, Understanding, Humility, 
Benignity, Compunction, Abstinence, Mercy, 



240 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Patience, Chastity, Moderation, Steadfastness, 
Love, Hope, Faith, Justice, and Fortitude. 

Yes, Christ calls us to a life of activity, to 
the diligent pursuit of virtue in deeds of use- 
fulness and benevolence. Christ wants His 
followers to imitate Himself, who went about 
continually doing good. He wants them to be 
active in obeying His commands. *' Ye are my 
disciples if ye do whatsoever I command you." 
He wants them to be good soldiers, fighting 
manfully under His banner. 

But His commands are not grievous. His 
service is not burdensome, " His yoke is easy 
and his burden is light." He left the world 
laying His mandate upon His followers to 
disciple it, but He blessed them as He com- 
manded. His commands are blessings. And 
this fact, too, the Venetians recognised, and 
meant to teach by the scrolls inscribed with 
benedictions, which they placed in the hands 
of the figures of the Virtues. The texts are 
mainly taken from the Sermon on the Mount. 
We are commanded to practise and to acquire 
virtues — yes, but in so doing we win heavenly 
blessings. Is it Humility we are called upon 
to possess ^ It bears the text, " Blessed are 
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven." Is it Benignity ? " Blessed are the 




ST. JOHN WRITING HIS GOSPEL 



To face page 240 



THE ASCENSION Ji41 

meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Is it 
Compunction — contrition for sin ? " Blessed 
are they that mourn, for they shall be com- 
forted." Is it Mercy, kindness to the un- 
deserving and unworthy ^ " Blessed are the 
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Is 
it Patience we are commanded to exercise ? 
" Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall 
be called the children of God." Is it Stead- 
fastness.'^ "Blessed are they who suffer 
persecution for righteousness' sake." Is it 
Faith .?> "The just shall live by faith"— 
faith is life. Is it Justice ? " The Lord loveth 
righteousness, the upright shall behold his 
face." Is it Endurance, Fortitude, that which 
Locke calls, '* the guard and support of the 
other virtues " ? " The Lord breaks the great 
teeth of the lions." It is the Lord who fighteth 
for us, and crowns endurance with victory. 

But over and above the blessings which 
the practice of these virtues brings, our 
Lord promises His disciples the unspeakable 
blessing of Himself, of His own perpetual 
presence. " Lo ! I am with you alway (all 
the days), even unto the end of the world. 
Amen." I, your King, wielding the sceptre of 
universal sovereignty, the possessor of all power 
in heaven and on earth, I am with you. Who, 



242 VENETIAN SERMONS 

therefore, can harm you ? Who can pluck 
you out of My hand ? *' Lo ! I am with 
you," why then be anxious ? I, your Lord, am 
at hand, omnipotent, omniscient, knowing all 
your trials and difficulties, and contests, there- 
fore " be anxious for nothing, but in every 
thing by prayer and supplication, with thanks- 
giving, let your requests be made known unto 
God," remembering My words : " Whatsoever 
ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will 
give it you." " Lo ! I am with you," who 
then can withstand you ? The Christian life, 
as St. Paul describes it, and as he experienced 
it, is a triumphal progress. " Now thanks be 
unto God, which always causeth us to triumph 
in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of 
his knowledge by us in every place." The 
realisation of the perpetual presence of Christ 
is what we need. 

But, in order to possess Christ's presence we 
must be in the way of His commandments, we 
must be obeying Him. His presence is con- 
ditioned by obedience, by the practice of virtue, 
by the fulfilment of His behests. Christ does 
not say, " Lo ! I am with you all the days : go 
ye therefore, and teach all nations ; " but He 
says, *' Go ye therefore, and teach all nations : 
and, lo ! I am with you alway (all the days). 



THE ASCENSION 243 

even unto the end of the world. Amen." 
Obey Mc, and then you will find that I am 
with you, guiding you, helping you, crowning 
you with benedictions. 

May all of us know Christ as our King. 
May we be His obedient, loving, happy sub- 
jects ; and thus obeying Him here below, and 
rejoicing in a sense of His perpetual pre- 
sence with us, look forward to His coming 
again, when He shall receive us unto Himself, 
into His own immediate presence, so that we 
shall be for ever with Him our Lord, for as 
He Himself has said, " Where I am, there 
shall also my servant be." " Father, I will 
that they also whom thou hast given me be 
with me where I am, that they may behold 
my glory." 

" Grant that like as we do believe 
thy only - begotten Son, our Lord 
Jesus Christ, to have ascended into 
the heavens ; so we may also in heart 
and mind thither ascend, and with him 
continually dwell." 



PENTECOST 



" Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is 
come, he will guide you into all truth : for he 
shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall 
hear, that shall he speak : and he will show you 
things to come. He shall glorify me ; for he shall 
receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." 

— John xvi. 13, 14, 



X 

PENTECOST 

^^ And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost ^ 
and began to speak with other tongues^ as the spirit 
gave them utterance ^ — Acts ii. 4. 

Last Sunday I directed our thoughts to the 
great historic fact of the Ascension, and I did 
so from the stand-point of the old Venetians, 
who realised, as no other people of that time 
seem to have done, its supreme importance — 
depicting it in beauty of line and figure and 
colour, and in fulness of detail in the main cen- 
tral cupola of St. Mark's Church ; and making 
its commemoration on Ascension Day, and on 
the days immediately succeeding it, the most im- 
portant religious and civil festival of the year. 
To-day is Whitsunday or Pentecost, the day 
set apart by the Christian Church for the 
commemoration of the Descent of the Holy 
Spirit ; and I wish this morning to consider that 
subject, and, in doing so, I wish to follow the 
plan I adopted last Sunday when considering the 

247 



^48 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Ascension, namely, to use for its elucidation and 
illustration whatever the Venetians have told us 
in ceremony or symbol of that great event. 

The Venetians realised the Descent of the 
Holy Spirit to be a great historic fact in 
the Christian faith, such as they realised the 
Ascension to be, and so they have assigned it a 
correspondingly important position in St Mark's 
Church, and represented it with equal fulness 
and beauty. It fills the whole of the western 
cupola, the cupola of the nave, the first seen on 
entering the church. It is in close and visible 
contact with that of the Ascension, reminding 
us that the subject of the one has an intimate 
connection with the subject of the other, that 
the one, indeed, is the consequence of the other. 
It is because Jesus ascended that the Holy 
Spirit came. Hence, commenting on one of 
our Lord's discourses, St. John says, " The 
Holy Ghost was not yet given ; because that 
Jesus was not yet glorified." And hence, too, 
our Saviour said, " It is expedient for you that 
I go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter 
will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will 
send him unto you." 

And in what sense did the Holy Spirit come 
after Christ's Ascension ? Was He not in the 
world before that event ? Let us look at the 



PENTECOST 249 

Pentecostal cupola and we shall get the answer. 
In the utmost height of it the Holy Spirit is 
represented as a pure white Dove, behind the 
head of which there is a golden disk, or 
nimbus. The Dove is enthroned. Beneath it 
there is a richly ornamented, richly cushioned 
and apparelled royal seat. We are thus taught 
that the Holy Spirit came as a Divine Person, 
the Third Person of the Glorious Trinity. 
Before Pentecost the Holy Spirit was present 
and operative in the world, but it was as an 
influence, an inflatus, an inspiration. He was 
known rather as an impersonal Divine energy 
than as a self-conscious, self-acting Divine 
Being. But at Pentecost, after our Lord's 
exaltation and glorification, a fuller revelation 
of the Holy Ghost was given than had ever 
been given before, for He was revealed as a 
Divine Person. 

Again, when we look up at the Pentecostal 
dome, we seem to be looking up at a great 
fountain. Jets of water shoot forth from the 
throne and stream down upon the apostles, 
who are represented sitting in a circle round 
the base of the cupola. These jets of water 
represent the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, 
and the representation is in accordance with 
Scripture teaching, for in St. John's Gospel we 



250 VENETIAN SERMONS 

read : "In the last day, that great day of the 
feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man 
thirst, let him come unto me, and drink/' And 
John adds : "This spake he of the Spirit, which 
they that believe on him should receive/' But 
now Christ was glorified, and the promise of 
the giving of the Holy Spirit, foretold under 
the symbol of water, was fulfilled. Indeed the 
Venetians had all this in their minds, for not 
only have they represented the Descent of the 
Holy Spirit as jets of water streaming in all 
directions from the throne, as from a fountain, 
but part of the inscription written above it 
says : " Spiritus in flammis^ super hos distillat ut 
amnisy (" The Spirit in flames, distils itself 
upon them like a river.") By this then we are 
taught that, whilst under the Old Testament 
dispensation the Holy Spirit came but to a 
few — to a few prophets, judges, kings, leaders, 
and to a few artisans, like Bezaleel and his 
companions — now, under the New Testament 
dispensation, the Holy Spirit comes to all. As 
the Apostle Peter told the multitude, the pro- 
phecy of Joel was fulfilled at Pentecost. " I 
will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh : and 
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
and your young men shall see visions, and your 
old men shall dream dreams." The Holy Spirit 




TONGUE OF FIRE ON APOSTLE'S HEAD 



To face page 250 



PENTECOST 251 

comes to all everywhere, surrounding them, 
enveloping them, or filling them, as the air 
fills a room or the lungs of a living man. 
*' Suddenly," we read, "there came a sound 
from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, 
and it filled all the house where they were 
sitting . . . And they were all filled with the 
Holy Ghost/' At Pentecost, the Dispensation 
of the Spirit, under which we live, was inaugu- 
rated. At Pentecost, our Saviour fulfilled His 
Ascension promise : " Lo ! I am with you all 
the days, even unto the end of the world," 
for leaving the world at His Ascension, and 
ceasing to be locally, corporeally present with a 
few, He returned at Pentecost in the person of 
the Holy Spirit, free from all the limitations of 
place and time, to be present at all times, in all 
places, in all circumstances, with all His people. 
And what was the mission of the Holy 
Spirit ^ To testify of Christ, to reveal Christ, 
to make known Christ's character, to interpret 
Christ's words and deeds. '' Howbeit when he, 
the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you 
into all truth. . . . He shall glorify me : for 
he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto 
you." ** When the Comforter is come, whom I 
will send unto you from the Father ... he shall 
testify of me." And so, in harmony with this 



252 VENETIAN SERMONS 

mission of the Holy Spirit, the Dove is repre- 
sented in the Pentecostal cupola, as not resting 
directly on the throne, but on a large golden- 
clasped Bible, which is placed upon its cushioned 
seat. That is to say, the Bible is placed on 
the throne, and the Spirit, as a Dove, rests 
upon it. It is the Bible that testifies of Christ. 
He is its sum and substance, from Genesis to 
Revelation. But it is the Spirit that inspired 
its writing : " For the prophecy came not in 
old time by the will of man : but holy men of 
God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost." And it is the Spirit that interprets it. 
The Bible under the Dove's feet is closed, 
showing that it is a sealed book to all without 
His guidance and teaching. He is " the Spirit 
of truth," who guides " into all truth." 

The mission of the Holy Spirit is further 
enforced in the Pentecostal cupola by each 
apostle being there represented with a book 
or a scroll in his hand. Pentecost, under the 
Jewish dispensation, was the anniversary of the 
giving of the Law from Mount Sinai, and it 
was the custom of the Jews to commemorate 
the event by the reading and study of their 
Scriptures. We may therefore suppose that 
the apostles and disciples were so engaged 
when the Holy Spirit came as their teacher. 



PENTECOST 253 

Hitherto they had failed to understand what 
their prophets and the psalmist had written 
of Christ, as they had failed to recognise 
Him as their Messiah when He sojourned with 
them. But the Holy Spirit came to them 
as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the 
knowledge of Christ. Instantly their ideas 
regarding Him were corrected and enlarged. 
They received spiritual discernment to under- 
stand Christ's true character and work as the 
Messiah of Old Testament type and symbol 
and prophecy — as the Saviour of the world. 
Our Saviour's words were fulfilled, " But the 
Paraclete, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the 
Father will send in my name, he shall teach 
you all things, and bring all things to your re- 
membrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." 
An old English poem of the fourteenth 
century has come down to us, and in it the 
writer makes the name Whitsunday to be a 
contraction, or corruption, of Witsunday, or 
Wisdom Sunday. He says : — 

" This day Whitsunday is cald, 
For wisdom and wit seven fald, 
Was given to the apostles on the day." 

Whether the derivation is correct or not, 
Whitsunday was a true Wit-sunday, a true 



254 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Wisdom Sunday to the apostles. May it be 
also such to us ! And that this may be the 
case we ought to occupy ourselves in the 
reading and study of the Holy Scriptures. 
It is generally when men are so engaged that 
the Holy Spirit comes to them. It was so, 
as we have seen, with the apostles. It was 
so with the Ethiopian nobleman. He was 
reading aloud, as he returned in his chariot 
from worshipping at Jerusalem, the book of 
the prophet Isaiah, when the Holy Spirit 
joined Himself to him in the person of the 
evangelist Philip, and taught him to find 
Christ in what he read. If we are to be 
taught of the Spirit, let us read the Spirit's 
book. The Spirit reveals Christ, but it 
generally is through the Bible, which testifies 
of Him. If we are diligent and earnest in 
studying the Scriptures, even if we do not 
understand some of the things we read, the 
Holy Spirit will sooner or later come to us 
as our teacher, to lead us into all truth, and 
to teach us all things. 

But in this matter the old Venetians realised 
that it was not so much to the minds of the 
apostles that the Spirit directed His teaching, 
as to their hearts. It is " with the heart 
man believeth unto righteousness." The Bible 




ELAMITES WHO HEARD THE GOSPEL IN THEIR 0\\'N TONGUE 

To face page 254 



PENTECOST 255 

presents Christ to us as a person to be loved, 
and does not simply tell us facts about Him 
to be intellectually believed. The Holy Spirit 
reveals Christ by causing us to love Him. 
Hence the Venetians have inscribed, circling 
round the dome above the apostles, these 
beautiful and significant words, the opening 
clause of which I have already quoted : — 

^^ Spiritus in flammis^ 
Super hos distillat ut amnts^ 
Corda replens munit^ 
Et amoris nexibus unit, 
Hinc varia gentes 
Miracula conspicientes 
Fuint credentes 
Vim linguae percipientes'' 

('* The Spirit in flames distils upon them like 
a river ; filling the heart it strengthens it, and 
unites it with the bands of love ; hence various 
nations, beholding the miracles, are made be- 
lievers, perceiving the strength of the tongues.") 
As this inscription teaches, it is not cold 
abstract intellectual knowledge of the truth 
that the Holy Spirit communicates, but that 
warm knowledge of Christ as a person which 
fills the heart, strengthening it and uniting it 
to Him with the bands of love. 



256 VENETIAN SERMONS 

The representation in the Pentecostal Dome 
also reminds us of that which this narrative 
so prominently brings before us, namely, that 
the Holy Spirit not only taught the apostles 
concerning Christ, but gave them power to 
communicate that knowledge. On the head 
of each of the apostles there is depicted a 
red tongue of fire, as we read, " there appeared 
unto them cloven tongues," parting asunder, 
or distributing themselves among them, " like 
as of fire, and it sat upon each of them." 

These tongues were the symbols, visible to 
others, of the power they had received to bear 
witness for Christ, and instantly they began 
to use it — they " began to speak with other 
tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." 
And, as the discourse which St. Peter delivered 
on this occasion shows, they preached, not 
about Christ, but Christ Himself — Jesus of 
Nazareth, the Messiah of Old Testament type 
and prophecy, the Saviour of the world, who 
died and rose again, and ascended to God's 
right hand. And they received power to 
witness for Christ, not only by their tongues, 
but by their pens. I believe that it will be 
found that wherever the apostles went they 
translated their teaching into the language of 
the country, and left thus a permanent record 



PENTECOST ^57 

of it with their converts. As St. Peter says 
in his second epistle : " Moreover, I v^ill en- 
deavour that ye may be able after my decease 
to have these things alv^ays in remembrance. 
For we have not followed cunningly devised 
fables, when we made known unto you the 
power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
but were eye-witnesses of his majesty." 

And this aspect of the Spirit's mission is 
also symbolised by the books and the scrolls 
which the apostles are represented as holding 
in their hands. They possessed the Jewish 
Scriptures, they were enabled to give to the 
Church and the world the Christian Scriptures. 
By tongue and by pen they were enabled to 
communicate the knowledge which they them- 
selves had been taught by the Holy Ghost. 

It is so always. We receive that we may 
give. The Holy Spirit teaches us that He 
may use us to teach others. The Spirit 
teaches through the Bible, but He also teaches 
by means of men. I remember what Mr. 
Ruskin once said to me here in Venice, when 
I was speaking of the invaluable character of 
his books: "Remember," he said, "that it is 
not the printed page, it is the living voice that 
touches the human heart." May we be all 
taught of God by His Holy Spirit, and be 



258 VENETIAN SERMONS 

given tongues to speak, and actions to testify 
of His Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. 

Turning again to the Pentecost cupola, we 
see beneath the apostles' feet, on the wall 
spaces between the windows of the dome, 
figures representing the different nations — six- 
teen in number — which heard spoken in their 
own tongues "the wonderful works of God." 
Each nation is represented by two figures, one 
that of a man and the other that of a woman, 
dressed in the costume characteristic of the 
country to which they belong, the name of 
which is inscribed over their heads. The 
order in which they are set round the cupola 
is that in which they occur in the book of 
Acts : Parthia, Media, Elam, Mesopotamia, 
Judasa, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, 
Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Cyrene, Rome, 
Crete, Arabia. 

By this we are taught that the Gospel is 
a Gospel for all, meeting equally the needs 
of all, independently of race, sex, climate, 
and intellectual condition, overstepping all 
national boundaries, all racial differences, all 
social distinctions, fitting into the needs of 
the human heart everywhere, a universal re- 
ligion, a religion for all mankind, demanding 
an " obedince of faith among all nations." 



PENTECOST 259 

And this is one of the unique features 
of Christianity. No other rehgion that has 
ever appeared on earth has manifested this 
adaptation. All others are local and national, 
or if not national, yet distinctly circumscribed 
and bounded by conditions they cannot over- 
step. It is so with Buddhism, it is so with 
Mohammedanism, which, flourishing in the 
East, can never take root in the West. But our 
historic faith, summed up in the person and 
work of Jesus Christ — Christianity which is 
Christ — meets equally the needs of the sinner 
the world over, delivering him from the bond- 
age of corruption, and making him what he 
was originally designed to be — a child of God. 
" I am the door, and by me if a^iy man enter 
in, he shall be saved and find pasture." 

And this adaptation to meet the needs of 
all obliterates those secondary differences that 
separate man from man, in the creation of a 
deeper unity. All men and all women become 
in the highest sense one in Christ. Hence 
the Apostle Paul says that in Christ Jesus 
" there is neither Greek nor Jew, circum- 
cision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, 
bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all" 
(Col. iii. ii). 

And this fact the Venetians have also 



260 VENETIAN SERMONS 

expressed in the words written round the 
dome, already quoted : — 

" Corda replens munit 
Et amoris nexihus unit'*' 

(" Filling the heart, it strengthens it, and 
unites it with the bands of love"). 

Let us notice in closing how the preaching 
of the Gospel was followed by conversions, 
and the converted were made holy and happy 
in the Lord. 

The word was received with gladness, and 
there were added unto the Church about 
three thousand souls, and " all that believed 
were together, and had all things common ; 
and sold their possessions and goods, and 
parted them to all men, as every man had 
need. And they, continuing daily with one 
accord in the temple, and breaking bread 
from house to house, did eat their meat with 
gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, 
and having favour with all the people." The 
Gospel by the Holy Spirit's aid was the power 
of God, and the wisdom of God unto salvation. 
The instruments of preaching seemed feeble — 
unlettered Galilean fishermen. So feeble did 
they seem that we read the people " were all 
amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, 



PENTECOST 261 

Behold, are not all these which speak Gali- 
leans ? " Yet the great work of raising dead 
souls to life was done. 

When the engineers and workmen were 
closing up the last plates of the great iron 
bridge that crosses the river Forth at Queens- 
ferry, near Edinburgh, they found that they 
could not make the rivet-holes come together, 
so as to permit them to drive home the 
bolts. All the hydraulic power they could 
bring to bear could not do it. Great fires, 
too, were kindled so as to expand the iron, 
but still a space of three-eighths of an 
inch separated hole from hole. " But," to 
quote the words of a newspaper report, " that 
night a soft south wind blew, and what the 
hydraulic jack could not accomplish with a 
pressure of a hundred and thirty tons, its 
genial influence, combined with that of the 
morning rays of the sun, successfully achieved. 
The huge fabric of steel expanded under the 
unseen but potent influences of a mild Novem- 
ber morning, the rivet-holes of the plates came 
opposite each other, and the bolts were driven 
home." 

It is the warm rays of Him who is the Sun 
of Righteousness, combined with the genial 
influence of the Holy Spirit, that softens and 



262 VENETIAN SERMONS 

expands the hard heart of man. " Not by 
might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith 
the Lord of hosts." 

Conversion means to-day what it meant 
at that Pentecostal time — holiness and peace 
and joy ; because the defiling and disturbing 
element of sin is taken away, and the believer's 
wants and aspirations are all met in Christ. 
The world begins to wear a new aspect to 
him. Life is changed, is transfigured for him. 
" Monotony of work " no longer means, to 
use a phrase of the late Bishop of Durham, 
" Monotony of life." The believer is made 
holy, and he is made happy, for these two 
elements ever go together. 

On the spandrels of the Pentecostal cupola 
are four angels. Each one bears a laharum^ 
or bann^er. On those carried by the three first 
angels are inscribed the letters S.C.S. (^sanctus) ; 
and on that of the fourth D.N.S. (Dominus). 
Then, above them, round the dome, are the 
words : Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sun tcceli et terra 
gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis. Benedictus qui 
venit in nomine Domini, Hosanna in excelsis. 
('' Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, 
Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. 
Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who 
Cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in 







fejyw: 



TONGUE OF FIRE ON APOSTLES HEAD 



To face page 262 



i 



PENTECOST 263 

the highest.") Thus the Trisagion^ the 7>r- 
sanctus^ the Thrice Holy, one of the oldest of 
the Greek doxologies, echoes round the dome, 
the song of the individual believer, the song 
of the redeemed Church on earth, the prelude 
to the song of the redeemed Church in heaven. 
May it be the song of our hearts, the out- 
come of the purity and peace and joy that 
we feel knowing Jesus as our Saviour, and in 
making Him known unto others, through the 
indwelling in our hearts of the Holy Spirit, 
the Spirit of Jesus, the great Teacher, the great 
Sanctifier, the great Inspirer of life, the great 
Giver of faith and peace and joy. 



XI 



ALL SAINTS' DAY 



" After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, 
which no man could number, of all nations, and 
kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the 
throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white 
robes, and palms in their hands ; and cried with a 
loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which 
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb." 

— Rev. vii. 9, 10. 



XI 

ALL SAINTS' DAY 

" Followers of them who through faith and 
patience inherit the promises^ — Heb. vi. 12. 

The Festival of All Saints, which falls to 
be observed to-day, November ist, is one of 
the oldest, not only in the calendar of the 
Christian Church, but in the written or 
unwritten calendar of any people. This is 
accounted for by the fact that the thoughts 
that underlie it, the feelings that prompt it, 
such as remembrance of the dead, commemo- 
ration of the dead, reverence for the dead, 
worship of the dead, fellowship with the dead, 
and even fear of the dead, are amongst the 
first forms in which the instinct of religion 
manifests itself. The mystery of death, the 
desire to establish a friendly fellowship with 
the spirits of the departed, are felt even by 
the lowest savages, and often prompts them 
to make the grave an altar of propitiation. 

In the Christian Church this festival, as the 
name implies, is designed to commemorate all 



268 VENETIAN SERMONS 

departed saints. And by saints we mean all who 
possessed a share of Christ's saintliness, all who 
here below led consecrated lives. The term in- 
cludes not only those who were conspicuous for 
their holiness, but all in whom the life of Christ 
was made manifest, whether in high station, and 
in the use made of many talents, and of vast 
means ; or in humble station, and in the use 
made of few talents, amid poverty and suffering. 

In observing it we come not only to the 
glorious company of the apostles, to the goodly 
fellowship of the prophets, and to the noble 
army of martyrs, but to '*the heavenly Jeru- 
salem ... to the general assembly and church 
of the first-born, which are written in heaven 
. . . and to the spirits of just men made per- 
fect," in order that we, recalling the lineaments 
of Christ's likeness which they exhibited in 
their characters and lives here below, may be 
enabled the better to grow up unto that divine 
likeness. 

We possess evidence of the antiquity of this 
festival of All Saints in the works of St. Chry- 
sostom and St. Gregory, both of whom, writing 
in the fourth century, make mention of it. 
Its formal recognition in the Latin Church is 
supposed to date from the year 6io, when the 
Pantheon at Rome, dedicated originally, as the 



ALL SAINTS' DAY 269 

name indicates, to " All the gods," was dedi- 
cated by Pope Boniface IV. to ''All the saints." 

Until the year 834, the date of its observ- 
ance seems to have been sometimes May ist 
and sometimes November ist, but since that 
year it has only been observed on the latter 
date. The festival was formally introduced 
into England in 870, and the Church retained 
it in the calendar at the Reformation, as was 
done by most of the Reformed Churches. Its 
old name was All Hallows, and the day was 
called Hallowmas. In Scotland it is still 
known by that name, although there the 
festival has nothing to do with the Church, 
but is a convivial remembrance of the old Celtic 
festival of Belein, the god of fire. 

The Festival of All Saints, though it con- 
ducts us to the cemetery and the tomb, is not 
necessarily a gloomy festival. Previous to 
the coming of Christ it was so. The funerals 
of the Greeks and Romans were frequently 
conducted by night, and the mourners who 
accompanied them carried cypresses in token of 
sorrow and defeat, because they believed that 
when the grave closed over their dead, it ended 
all. Thus a Greek poet speaks of the withered 
flowers in his garden reviving with the breath 
of spring, whilst no requickening ever visited 



270 VENETIAN SERMONS 

those who slept in death ; and the Latin poet 
Catullus, whose home was at Verona, and at 
olive-clad Sirmione on the Lake of Garda, 
says, that when suns set, they rise again, but 
man, when his brief day is over, sinks into 
an eternal night. But at the coming of Christ 
all was changed. He brought " life and im- 
mortality to light through the gospel." And 
hence, amongst the early Christians, funerals 
were always conducted by day, and those who 
followed them carried palms and olive boughs 
in token of victory and joy. Not only so, 
but the very road along which the procession 
moved, as well as the grave itself, was strewn 
with flowers, whilst the processionists chanted 
psalms and hymns of triumph. These customs 
have come down in part to the present day, and 
were observed almost unimpaired in the time of 
Washington Irving, as is shown by the following 
lines from his pen : — 

" White his shroud as the mountain snow, 
Larded all with sweet flowers ; 
Which be-wept to the grave did go 
With true love showers. 
Thus, and thus, and thus we compass round, 
The harmless and unhaunted ground, 
And as we sing thy dirge, we will the daffodil, 
And other flowers, lay upon 
The altar of our love, thy stone." 



ALL SAINTS' DAY 271 

In the early centuries, too, the cross never 
bore the figure of a dead Christ. There were 
no " crucifixes." There were crosses, but they 
were the symbols of victory. The early Fathers 
said : " Christ reigned from the tree." They 
realised, what we need ever to realise, that 
death is an act done by a living man. 

In like manner all early Christian art is 
joyous. As the late Bishop Westcott has said: 
" Early Christian art is always joyous. In 
spite of appearances the Christian believed that 
the victory over sin and death was already won, 
and he gave expression to his conviction." 

I have no means of knowing exactly how 
funerals were conducted in Venice in the early 
centuries of its history, but the many tombs 
that still exist, which date from that period, 
all bear witness to the same spirit of Christian 
joy and triumph. These tombs are to be seen 
in St. Mark's Church, and in the Frari, called 
the Pantheon of Venice, and in SS. Giovanni 
and Paolo, called its Westminster Abbey. 
They are all sarcophagi, and are set unob- 
trusively away against the walls, sometimes 
not inside the church at all, but in its atrium, 
as in St. Mark's, or in niches in the wall out- 
side, as at SS. Giovanni and Paolo. They are 
of plain construction, with but little decoration, 



272 VENETIAN SERMONS 

free, on the one hand, from anything suggesting 
" pride of life," and on the other from any- 
thing suggesting " fear of death." " Rock 
tombs," Mr. Ruskin calls them. And what 
carving there is, consisting generally of an 
Annunciation and a cross, and not unfrequently 
of a figure of Christ before which he whose 
tomb it is kneels, was chosen with a definite 
purpose, namely, to show that the hope of the 
deceased was in the birth and death of Christ, 
through whom he had "fought a good fight " 
and had finished his course, and had left the 
field, not a captive in the grasp of death, but 
a conqueror over it, able to join with St. Paul 
in his paean of victory, '* O death, where is thy 
sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ^ The 
sting of death is sin ; and the strength of sin 
is the law. But thanks be to God, which 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

Venice has but one cemetery, one burying- 
ground, one Campo Santo^ as it is called, and it 
is outside the city altogether, in San Michele, 
an island in the northern lagoon that looks 
towards the Dolomite Mountains. No burying 
takes place within the city. Like the widow 
of Nain's son, like Lazarus, like our Lord 
Himself, its dead are all carried outside the city 



ALL SAINTS' DAY 273 

gates. But this dates only from recent times. 
From its foundation down to the fall of the 
Republic, the dead were buried in the campos 
or little fields in front of the churches. These 
are now simply paved squares, they were origi- 
nally the parish churchyards. Indeed the campo 
of the Church of San Simeone Piccolo is still 
called Campo Santo ^ and, but a few months ago, 
when the pavement of the Campo San Moise, 
near St. Mark's Square, was taken up, and the 
ground disturbed for the purpose of rectifying 
the drainage, I myself saw abundant proof that 
it had been a churchyard. Burials also took 
place in the narrow borders of ground that 
generally encircle churches. These are now 
paved lanes, but the word sacrum inscribed on 
them shows that they were once consecrated 
ground, and indeed one strip of land attached 
to the Church of San Salvatore, at the head of 
the Merceria, near the Rialto, still lies in its 
original condition. 

It is curious to think what Venice must 
have been when everywhere such open burying- 
places obtruded themselves in the sight of its 
busy, bustling merchants and traders, and of 
its idly-busy pleasure-seekers. Perhaps the 
effect was salutary as a memento mori^ and also 
as a silent, persuasive, and abiding incentive 

s 



274 VENETIAN SERMONS 

to work. But for obvious reasons such 
burying-grounds were most objectionable, and 
so Napoleon the Great, to whom Venice is in- 
debted for many reforms, caused them all to 
be closed, and ordered the Venetians to make 
the island of San Cristoforo, which lay next 
that of San Michele, the necropolis of the city. 
Strangely enough, this island had been used by 
the Protestants of Venice as their cemetery for 
a hundred years before Napoleon's day, for they 
received it for this purpose from the Republic 
of Venice in 171 8. In 18 13 Napoleon's orders 
were carried out, and for the next thirteen 
years Protestants and Roman Catholics alike 
found on San Cristoforo their last resting-place. 
In 1826, however, the island became inade- 
quate for the city's needs, so the adjacent 
island of San Michele was joined to it by the 
filling up of the narrow canal that separated 
them. As this latter was the bigger island, 
the name of the lesser, San Cristoforo, was 
gradually dropped, and the whole united island 
became known as San Michele, which, as I 
have said, is now the sole Campo Santo of 
Venice. Another enlargement of it will soon 
have to be made, as its sleeping inhabitants 
now outnumber by six to one the living ones 
of the city. 



ALL SAINTS' DAY 275 

For the Venetians, one part of the observ- 
ance of All Saints' Day, and an essential part 
of it, is to go on pilgrimage to the Campo 
Santo. To relieve gondola and steamboat con- 
gestion, and to enable the poorer people to go 
in great numbers and without expense, the 
Venetian Municipality construct a bridge of 
boats from the nearest part of the city — the 
Fondamenta Nuova — to the island, a distance 
of about half a mile. On this day, then, the 
silent island of the dead is all astir with the 
presence of the city's thousands. The spectacle 
of men and women, aged and young, rich and 
poor, moving amongst the graves and tombs, 
walking over the dust of their friends, and 
kneeling upon the ashes of their relatives in a 
fellowship of suffering and of hope, is strange 
and touching, and deeply suggestive. 

If All Saints' Day has any lessons to teach 
us, it is here we can best learn them. 

(i) I referred at the beginning of my dis- 
course to the happy view the Christians in the 
early centuries took of their dead, regarding 
them as conquerors, and strewing their path 
to the grave with flowers. The appearance of 
the island of San Michele on All Saints' Day 
recalls the spirit and customs of that time. In 
England burying-places are always more or 



276 VENETIAN SERMONS 

less like flower-gardens, the grounds being 
beautifully laid out, and the graves all tenderly 
cared for. But in Italy it is not so. Italian 
burial-grounds are generally neglected spots, 
where the vegetation grows rank and repulsive. 
San Michele forms no exception to this state- 
ment. During the greater part of the year it 
is unvisited and untended. But on All Saints' 
Day its appearance is changed. The multi- 
tudes that throng it break themselves up into 
groups ; each group seeks out the graves of its 
own relatives, which they begin at once to put 
in order by cutting down and rooting up all 
rank grasses and weeds. They then dress and 
decorate them with plants, wreaths, and gar- 
lands, and light them up with lamps and 
candles. The whole place becomes transformed. 
It puts on " beauty for ashes, the garment of 
praise for the spirit of heaviness." It adds 
emphasis to the apostle's exhortation that we 
should not sorrow for our dead " as others 
which have no hope." Our dead live. Death 
is for them the very condition of an amplified 
and a glorified life. They that have died have 
entered into life. 

It is to be regretted that San Michele does 
not wear its bright All Saints' Day aspect 
throughout the year, and that the beauty of 




DECORATING THE GRAVES AT THE CAMPO SANTO 

To face page 276 



ALL SAINTS' DAY 277 

other Italian cemeteries is also spasmodic and 
ephemeral. Though few people now, like 
Joseph, give commandment concerning their 
bones, still every tomb ought to be cared for. 
There need be nothing of idolatry in this, but 
only an expression of reverence for the body 
which God made, and which He in Christ has 
taken to Himself; and for the grave, which 
God Himself in some wonderful way formed 
for his servant Moses, and which Christ has for 
ever consecrated by His death and burial. 

(2) Regarding our dead as conquerors, we 
are led to think of them as crowned. The 
Apostle Paul, referring to the struggle and 
fighting of the Christians here below, says that 
whilst others strive to obtain a corruptible 
crown, they do it to obtain an incorruptible. 
And speaking of his own life's struggle, he says : 
" Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
judge, shall give me at that day : and not to 
me only, but unto all them also that love his 
appearing." And St. James says : " Blessed is 
the man that endureth temptation : for when 
he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, 
which the Lord hath promised to them that 
love him." St. Peter also says : " And when 
the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive 



278 VENETIAN SERMONS 

a crown of glory that fadeth not away." And 
our Lord Himself said, " Be thou faithful 
unto death, and I will give thee a crown of 
life." All Christians who die as conquerors, 
are thus crowned, whether it be after a long or 
after a brief campaign. We sometimes speak 
of an incomplete life, but no life, however short, 
is incomplete that has been lived in Christ. 
No, not even if, so far as appearances went, it 
were unsuccessful as well as brief. Otherwise 
the lives of many of God's children, such as 
those of Abel and Enoch, Elijah and Josiah, 
and of the youthful martyr Stephen, were in- 
complete ; otherwise, even of the life of our 
Lord Himself, the same might be said. One 
may sow and another may reap, but all ulti- 
mately are crowned in Christ, so " that he 
that soweth, and he that reapeth, may rejoice 
together." " As his part is that goeth down 
to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth 
by the stuff: they shall part alike." 

(3) In Venice the bulk of the people are 
too poor to own vaults or graves of their own, 
so that they are buried in common ground. A 
great part of the island thus consists of " the 
graves of the common people," and as these 
are turned over afresh every ten years, we see 
in this Campo Santo what we do not see in our 



ALL SAINTS' DAY 279 

own native land, large ossuaries or charnel- 
houses. In looking at these we naturally think 
of the question in EzekieFs vision, " Can these 
bones live ? " and of how, when Ezekiel had 
prophesied, as an answer '' there was a noise, 
and behold a shaking, and the bones came 
together, bone to his bone . . . and the flesh 
came up upon them, and the skin covered 
them . . . and the breath came into them, 
and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, 
an exceeding great army." We think of the 
resurrection, that the grave is not an eternal 
prison-house, that our bodies there " rest in 
hope," that a day is coming when " they that 
sleep in the dust shall wake," when " He that 
raised up Christ from the dead shall also 
quicken our mortal bodies." We love to 
think that even now the waters of eternal 
life are rolling onward toward this and all 
" God's acres," in as full and free a volume as 
those of the Adriatic Sea that are being borne 
inward by the rushing spring-tide. We love 
to think of Christ's second coming, at whose 
girdle hang " the keys of hell and of death," who 
is in Himself to all His people "the Resurrection 
and the Life," when He " shall descend from 
heaven with a shout, with the voice of the 
Archangel, and with the trump of God," and 



280 VENETIAN SERMONS 

when " the dead in Christ shall rise first," 
when this mortal shall put on immortality, 
when, as the seed gives us more than we sowed, 
gives us green leaf and coloured flower and 
sweet fruit, so this body, sown as the body of 
our humiliation, shall rise transformed into the 
body of our glory. Then body and spirit, the 
two essential parts of our manhood, separated 
for a time, shall once more be reunited, and we 
shall be " for ever with the Lord." 

(4) Lastly, we are led to think of what is 
implied in that phrase, which was added to 
the Apostles' Creed in the eighth century, 
the " Communion of Saints." We are led to 
think of all saints " knit together in one com- 
munion and fellowship, in the mystical body " 
of Jesus Christ, our Lord. To the eye of 
sense a gulf seems to separate the living from 
the dead, but to the eye of faith no such gulf 
exists. They who have died are united to 
each other, and also to us, for we form the one 
great family of the redeemed. 

" O blest communion, fellowship Divine ! 
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine ; 
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine." 

It is an ennobling thought to belong to a 
great family, to a great society, to a great 
nation, let us then realise the nobility of our 



ALL SAINTS' DAY 281 

being " fellow-citizens with the saints, and of 
the household of God." The late Bishop 
Westcott seemed to believe in a ministration 
of angels through the phenomena of nature 
and the operations of natural law, and he 
quotes a distinguished physiologist as saying, 
*' I can see nothing in all nature but the loving 
acts of spiritual beings." Whether we believe 
in the service of angels rendered after such a 
fashion or not, we yet do believe, with St. 
Paul, that they are '' all ministering spirits, 
sent forth to minister for them who shall 
be heirs of salvation," and that their interest 
and sympathy with us in our trials and 
struggles here below cannot be greater than 
that of the redeemed who form the great 
encompassing cloud of witnesses, of which St. 
Paul also speaks, who testify to the power of 
faith to enable us to overcome the world, even 
as it enabled them to overcome it. Let us 
thus enter into the " Communion of Saints " ; 
and to give point and directness to our medita- 
tion that it may be the more profitable unto 
us, let us not be content to call up in memory 
the names of great spiritual heroes — patriarchs, 
judges, apostles, confessors, martyrs, " all that 
chivalry of fire," but let each call up in his 
own mind the names and lives of saintly ones 



282 VENETIAN SERMONS 

he has known in his own family and household, 
and within the circle of his friends, and seek 
to allow the influence of their characters to 
permeate his own. Thus may our commemora- 
tion of All Saints' Day stimulate us to increased 
zeal and energy in Christ's service, that we may 
be found " not slothful, but followers of them 
who through faith and patience inherit the 
promises," so that we too may become con- 
querors, and obtain a name and a place in the 
New Jerusalem above, where God sets " the 
solitary in families," and where " the inhabitant 
shall not say I am sick," where " there shall 
be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 
neither shall there be any more pain : for the 
former things are passed away." 

" O God of Saints, to Thee we cry ; 
O Saviour, plead for us on high ; 
O Holy Ghost, our Guide and Friend, 
Grant us Thy grace till life shall end, — 
That with all Saints our rest may be 
In that bright Paradise with Thee." 



XII 



THE OLIVE TREE 



" The Lord called thy name, A green olive 
tree, fair, and of goodly fruit." — Jer. xi. i6. 



XII 
THE OLIVE TREE 

" But I am like a green olive tree in the house 
of GodT — Psalm Hi. 8. 

In a beautiful passage about trees, Mr. Ruskin, 
paraphrasing Milton, says, "Trees, which, as 
in sacred dance, make the borders of the river 
glad with their procession and the mountain 
ridges statelier with their pride, are all ex- 
pressions of the vegetative power in its accom- 
plished felicities ; gathering themselves into 
graceful companionship with the fairest arts 
and serenest life of man ; and providing, not 
only the sustenance and the instruments, but 
also the lessons and the delights of that life, 
in perfectness of order, and unblighted fruition 
of season and time." 

Perhaps the truths thus expressed were 
suggested to Mr. Ruskin by the association 
of trees with man in sacred history. Anyhow 
his words exactly express what we find in 
Scripture. In Genesis we read that, " the 

285 



286 VENETIAN SERMONS 

Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden ; 
and there he put the man whom he had formed. 
And out of the ground made the Lord God to 
grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, 
and good for food, the tree of life also in the 
midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge 
of good and evil. And the Lord God took 
the man, and put him into the garden of Eden 
to dress it and to keep it." And in Revela- 
tion we read of the " tree of life, which bare 
twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit 
every month : and the leaves of the tree were 
for the healing of the nations." And in har- 
mony with these passages, that occur in the 
opening chapter of the Jewish Scriptures, and in 
the closing chapter of the Christian Scriptures 
wherever trees are mentioned, throughout the 
whole Bible, they are associated with human 
life, with its successes and failures, its joys 
and sorrows, its hopes and disappointments, 
and above all, with man's ruin by the Fall, and 
his redemption by Jesus Christ. 

And of the different trees of the Scriptures, 
no one, not even the vine, the emblem of our 
Lord Himself — for which tree the olive has 
a great affinity — is more frequently mentioned, 
or more honourably mentioned than the olive. 
It is associated, too, with the sufferings of our 



THE OLIVE TREE 287 

Lord in a peculiar manner. The Mount of 
Olives was to a certain extent tlis home. 
There He passed nights in prayer amongst 
the seclusion of the trees. The olives of 
Gethsemane — which word means oil press — 
were the witnesses of His agony. The Mount 
of Olives is associated with His triumphal 
entry into Jerusalem, and with the prediction 
of the overthrow of that city. It is associated 
with His Ascension. It was from that mount 
that He ascended up, as a King, to where He 
was before. 

This tree, then, of such hallowed associations 
is the tree spoken of in our text. It is the 
tree to which David metaphorically compares 
himself. In using this metaphor he bids us 
see the characteristics of the olive tree exempli- 
fied in himself. " I am like a green olive tree 
in the house of God." 

Does the language sound self-complacent ? 
I think not, if we observe that he adds im- 
mediately " in the house of God. I trust 
in the mercy of God for ever and ever.'' It 
is not because of what he is in himself that 
he is a green olive tree, but because of his 
connection with God — a connection granted to 
him in mercy. Mercy is kindness bestowed 
upon the undeserving, upon those who can 



288 VENETIAN SERMONS 

advance no claim for its bestowment. There 
is therefore here a confession of personal 
unworthiness, and a tracing up of all he is 
and has to God's loving-kindness and tender 
mercy. Indeed it shows the strength of 
David's faith that he could use this metaphor 
in the circumstances in which he was placed. 
For, as the explanatory words at the beginning 
of the Psalm, which form really its first verse, 
show us, the occasion of his writing it was 
when Doeg the Edomite went and told Saul 
of his having seen David at Nob, in the house 
of Ahimelech the priest, who had given him 
bread and the sword of Goliath. Saul im- 
mediately sent for Ahimelech, and having slain 
him and all the priests, eighty-five persons, 
set out, with a great multitude of men, in 
pursuit of David. David was therefore at this 
time a poor fugitive, being hunted like a par- 
tridge in the mountains, living among " the 
rocks of the wilderness," and hiding " in dens 
and caves of the earth." Yet his faith was 
such that even in these dark days of trouble 
and peril he could say, in contrast to the fate 
of the godless, whom, he tells us in the fifth 
verse, God would pluck up and root out of 
the land of the living, " But I am like a green 
olive tree in the house of God." 



THE OLIVE TREE 289 

We will now consider some of the chief 
characteristics of the olive tree, which found 
their counterpart in the character and life of 
David, and which should also be exemplified 
in those of all Christians. These characteristics 
must be more or less familiar to all of us, 
because Italy, in which we are now travelling 
and sojourning, is the greatest olive-growing 
country in Europe. In its southern provinces, 
in Tuscany, and along the Riviera there are 
millions of acres devoted to its cultivation, and 
here in Venice the names of streets, quays, 
bridges, and even that of an entire island, recall 
the fact that olive trees once grew in these 
lagoons, and that olive oil was a staple article 
of Venetian commerce and export. The island 
of Castello, where the old cathedral of Venice 
stands, was originally called Olivolo, because of 
its groves of olives, and to this day there is the 
Ponte deir Olio, the Calk delP Olio, and Riva 
deir Olio. Venice thus associates itself with 
the subject of our study. 

( I ) The first characteristic of the olive tree which 
I will speak of is its evergreenness. — The ever- 
greenness of the olive tree is referred to ex- 
pressly in the text, " I am like a green olive 
tree." All trees are clothed in green, but 
most of them only for a part of the year. 



290 VENETIAN SERMONS 

They put on their freshly woven green mantle 
in the spring-time, but they put it off again in 
the autumn, and stand shivering, stripped and 
bare, in the cold blast during the long winter 
months. But it is not so with the olive tree. 
It stands always " robed in living green.'* Its 
leaves are neither burned up by summer's heat, 
nor withered by winter's cold. It sheds its 
leaves, it is true, but it does so gradually. As 
some fall off, others come on, so the change is 
imperceptible to the eye, and the tree is ever 
green, ever leafy, ever flourishing, ever full. 
" It has no sorrow in its note, no winter in its 
year." The very life of the tree is in its leaf. 
According to Mr. Ruskin, "The leaves are the 
tree itself;" by them "it breathes and lives." 
The botanist says, " The leaf is an expansion of 
the bark of the stem ; " more accurately Mr. 
Ruskin says, " The bark is a contraction of the 
tissue of the leaf, for every leaf is born out 
of the earth, and breathes into the air. The 
trunk is a bundle of leaf fibres." The falling 
leaf, then, the autumnal leaf, such as those that 
strew " the brooks of Vallombrosa," may be 
the emblem of human decay — " we all do fade 
as a leaf," but the evergreen leaf, whether on 
the tree, or woven into a crown on the victors' 
brows, is the emblem of life, of enduring life. 



THE OLIVE TREE 291 

And so, when David applies this metaphor 
to himself, he avows his belief in the reality 
and the security, and the enduring character of 
his life in God*s hands. He virtually says, " I 
have life, and I have an unending life." It 
is not evanescent, it will not pass away. My 
life is evergreen, it will last on and on. He 
expresses the same thought in that psalm of 
psalms, the First Psalm, where he says the 
godly man " shall be like a tree planted by the 
rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit 
in his season ; his leaf also shall not wither ; 
and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." 

In being at peace with God, in holding 
fellowship with God, in serving God, David 
possessed an unending life. " Thou wilt show 
me the path of life : in thy presence is fulness 
of joy ; at thy right hand are pleasures for 
evermore." 

And this similitude of a green olive tree, 
applied by David to himself, is applied by God 
to all His people. " The Lord called thy name, 
a green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit." 

If David then, and God's people, in that far 
back time, realised the fact here symbolised by 
the figure of the text, how much more should 
the Christian? "In Christ" he is joined to 
the fountain of life. It has been truly said 



292 VENETIAN SERMONS 

" there is no wealth but life," and this is the 
wealth Christ came to give. It was His very 
mission to bring life into our dead and dying 
souls. **I am come that ye might have life, 
and have it more abundantly." '* I am the 
way, the truth, and the life." " He that be- 
lieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die." In Christ we live now, 
and shall go on living for ever. The Chris- 
tian's leaf is fadeless, ever green, ever flourish- 
ing. He goes from strength to strength, 
from life to life — his faculties and powers, 
not only knowing no extinction or suspen- 
sion, but growing continually in capacity and 
activity. Death is the goal, the winning- 
post, at which he, the victor, receives as a 
prize from the hand of our Lord Himself, 
not " a crown," but " the crown of life " 
(Rev. ii. 20). 

(2) The second characteristic of the olive tree 
to he noticed is its fruitfulness. — It is not often 
that an evergreen tree produces fruit at all. 
Only a few do so, and the olive is one of them. 
And it not only produces fruit, but it produces 
an abundance of fruit. It is rich in fruit. 
Indeed, it is said to be one of the richest trees 
God has made. Many of us, I daresay, have 



THE OLIVE TREE 293 

seen its branches weighed down with berries — 
each tiny twig bearing the dark, oblong fruit, 
with its soft blue bloom. In the parable of 
Jothan, related in the ninth chapter of Judges, 
this feature of the olive tree, its rich fruitful- 
ness, is spoken of. " The trees went forth on 
a time to anoint a king over them ; and they 
said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. 
But the olive tree said unto them, Should I 
leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour 
God and man, and go to be promoted over the 
trees ^ " Likewise St. Paul, in the eleventh 
chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, in his 
parable about the bringing in of the Gentiles, 
speaks of the " root and fatness of the olive 
tree." 

The olive tree does not bear a full crop of 
fruit every season, nor is every crop alike good ; 
a very good crop may alternate with a compara- 
tively poor one, but, taking one season with 
another, its average crop is greater than that of 
any other tree. The value of the crop of an 
olive tree often exceeds the value of a good 
forest timber tree — for example, a good fir tree 
is worth fifteen shillings or a pound, but the 
crop of an olive tree is often worth two pounds ; 
so one tree is thus equal to a capital of about 
fifty pounds. 



294 VENETIAN SERMONS 

The fruitfulness of the olive tree is thus one 
of its marked characteristics. And it is fruit- 
ful though growing in the poorest soil. It 
will flourish where hardly anything else will 
— living and thriving in barren ground. And 
this struggle for life improves the quality of 
its life, just as the battling with difficulties 
does in all departments of life in the vegetable, 
and animal, and spiritual worlds. In the case 
of the olive the berry is enhanced in delicacy 
of flavour. The olive will literally " bring us 
oil out of the flinty rock," and all the better 
oil that it has to work hard in the process. 
And not only is the olive a fruitful tree, but 
it will continue from year to year, from age to 
age, fruitful. It is a long-lived tree, like the 
vine, and, like the vine, it never becomes un- 
fruitful. Some olive trees are known to have 
lived for five, six, and even seven centuries, 
with undiminished fruitfulness. " They shall 
still bring forth fruit in old age." 

In like manner the life of David was 
characterised by fruitfulness. Personally he 
was richly endowed. He was a Poet. Al- 
though he did not write all the psalms in this 
precious manual of devotion which has come 
down the centuries, and which is the heritage 
of the Universal Church to-day, he wrote at 




THEY SHALL STILL BRING FORTH FRUIT IN OLD AGE" 

To face page 294 



THE OLIVE TREE 295 

least half of the collection. He was emphati- 
cally the Psalmist. He was a Musician. He was 
at the first recommended to King Saul by his 
servants as a man who could play cunningly on 
the harp. He was ** the sweet singer of Israel." 
He was a great Soldier, a great military genius. 
These same servants of King Saul spoke in 
praise of him as " a mighty valiant man, and a 
man of war." His exploits and his campaigns 
read like a romance. He was a Statesman. It 
was said of him, before he entered SauFs service, 
that he was " prudent in matters," and, after 
Saul took him, that he *' behaved himself wisely 
in all his ways," and that he " behaved himself 
more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so 
that his name was much set by." And all 
through his after career he displayed great 
political tact and wisdom. Lastly, he was a 
Sovereign, and the greatest Sovereign, as Moses 
was the greatest lawgiver, the kingdom of 
Israel ever knew. Indeed, David created the 
kingdom of Israel. Before the reign of his 
predecessor Saul, it was, if not exactly what 
Italy was before the Sixties, " a geographical 
expression," yet, like Italy of the past, it was 
a mere congeries of states and tribes, divided 
from each other by rancours and jealousies. 
And even under Saul it had no Capital, and no 



^96 VENETIAN SERMONS 

united national life. But David, like Victor 
Emmanuel II., in Italy, welded its scattered 
fragments into one living whole, with Jerusalem, 
wrested from the Jebusites, as the centre of its 
life ; and he raised the kingdom thus created 
to its highest state of prosperity and glory. 

We cannot all be Davids. It is not given to 
many in the world to play all the public parts 
David did, and to play them so well. But we 
can, each in his own sphere, strive to avoid 
leading self-centred and self-seeking lives, and 
strive rather to have them characterised by 
fruitfulness, by works done not for our sake, 
but for the sake of others, as the tree produces 
fruit not for its own consumption, but for that 
of others. Let us fill our lives with deeds 
done for the sake of country, church, society, 
friends, family, neighbours, the poor, the suffer- 
ing, for special classes, for those on whom the 
hand of bereavement or misfortune or punish- 
ment lies heavy, for those who have few to 
guide them and help them amid the troubles 
and perils of this present life — works done for 
the sake of God and humanity, "fruits of 
righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto 
the glory and praise of God," even though such 
works may be few — " two or three berries 
in the top of the uppermost bough, four or 



THE OLIVE TREE 297 

five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof" 
— works all the better that they are produced 
amid difficulties, as we saw the berries are all 
the better, and the oil all the sweeter, when 
produced by trees rooted in the flinty rock. 

(3) The third characteristic of the olive tree is 
its usefulness. — ^The olive tree is a useful tree. 
On one of the pediments of the Parthenon, the 
great and beautiful temple to the goddess 
Athena, that stood on the Acropolis, in Athens, 
there were sculptures which represented the 
following legend. Athena and Poseidon were 
contending about the sovereignty of Attica. 
The other deities intervened, and it was 
arranged that the one should get it who 
produced the most useful gift possible for 
the service of man. Poseidon, then, with his 
trident, struck the bare rock of the Acropolis, 
and caused a spring of brackish water to come 
up. Athena followed, and caused an olive tree 
to grow on the same flinty soil. The deities 
judged hers to be the more useful gift, and 
she obtained the coveted possession. Hence 
the names Attica and Athens. The legend 
shows the high estimation set by the ancients 
on the usefulness of the olive tree. There is 
no part of the tree which is not useful. For 
example — 



298 VENETIAN SERMONS 

(a) The fruity of which I have just sj 
is useful. — Some trees have an abundance of 
fruit, but it is useless, or it may be hurtful 
or poisonous. But the olive tree is " a good 
tree, and bringeth forth good fruit." Its 
berries are wholesome, and are used largely 
for food, either in a natural or in a preserved 
state. In England olive berries are used only 
as a relish for food, but amongst Asiatic 
nations they are a necessary adjunct to the 
table. The pastoral meal of Horace consisted 
of " olive, endive, and mallow." 

{b) The oil extracted from the berries is use- 
ful. — It is one of the most valuable oils in 
existence. It is the only oil spoken of in the 
Bible, and it is spoken of very frequently, and 
always as serving sacred and useful purposes. 
It was offered with the flour of oblation, *' a 
tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth 
part of an hin of beaten oil " (Exod. xxix. 40). 
"And if thy oblation be a meat ofl^ering . . . 
it shall be of fine flour unleavened, mingled 
with oil. Thou shalt part it in pieces, and 
pour oil thereon : it is a meat off^ering " 
(Lev. ii. 5, 6). "And this is the law of the 
sacrifice of peace offerings. ... If he offer it 
for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer . . . un- 
leavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened 



THE OLIVE TREE 

wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mingled with 
oil" (Lev. vii. ii, 12). From Exod. xxx. 24, 
we learn that it formed an element in the holy 
ointment used in the consecration of Aaron 
and of others to the priesthood, and to make 
holy the vessels of the sanctuary. It was used 
in the coronation of kings: "Then Samuel 
took the horn of oil, and anointed him (David) 
in the midst of the brethren " (i Sam. xvi. 13). 
It was burned in the lamps of the Tabernacle 
and of the Temple. In Exodus xxvii. 20, 
we read, ''And thou (Moses) shalt command 
the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure 
oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp 
to burn always." In the vision of Zechariah 
and in that of St. John, we read of the two 
olive trees and the two candlesticks that stand 
before the God of the whole earth. Then, 
regarded from the edible and culinary point 
of view, olive oil possesses properties which 
no other vegetable oil possesses. And so in 
countries where the olive tree flourishes, as in 
Italy and Spain, it is extensively used for baking 
bread, for making soups, and in general cook- 
ing. It is not only a useful condiment, but is 
considered in the East essential to healthful 
life. Since Noah sent forth the dove out of 
the Ark, which returned to him with an olive 



300 VENETIAN SERMONS 

leaf plucked off, the olive has been the symbol 
not only of peace and goodwill, but also of 
national wealth and domestic plenty. 

(c) Its wood is useful. — It is hard, and beauti- 
fully marked, and takes a brilliant polish. In 
the Temple of Solomon the great Cherubim 
of ten cubits, whose wings stretched from 
wall to wall in the Holy of Holies, and met 
over the Mercy Seat, were made of olive 
wood. At the present day it is worked into 
beautiful and durable articles of commerce. 

(^) Its roots are useful.— In olive-growing 
countries coal is not usually found, but the 
roots of the olive take its place, and good 
clear burning fuel they make. The crushed 
stones of its berries are also used for burning. 

(e) Its leaves are useful.-^The leaves of the 
olive form a veil which so modifies the intense 
noonday heat of an Eastern or Southern sun, 
that grain and vegetables can be grown beneath 
and around the tree. This is not possible in 
the case of other trees. Their presence and 
shade usually delays vegetation around them. 
No one would think to sow grain in a forest 
of oaks and ipine. But in olive-growing lands 
all the soil on the olive terraces is sown and 
planted, and the presence of the olive, with its 
evergreen leaves, not so thick as to exclude 



THE OLIVE TREE 301 

light and air, but just close enough to " temper 
the deceitful ray," directly promotes growth. 

(/) Its bark is useful. — From it is extracted 
a tonic medicine, useful in intermittent fever, 
and also a gum used as a perfume. 

Thus, too, the life of David was a useful 
life. It was not only characterised by much 
fruit, but by much good fruit — fruit useful 
unto others. From what we have already 
seen of his life's work, this is apparent, al- 
though we do not hide from ourselves that 
politically he made mistakes, and morally he 
fell into grievous sins, which were hurtful unto 
others, and brought shame on the name and 
cause of Jehovah. Still the glory of his char- 
acter and reign is the heritage of the Jews 
to-day, as his Psalter is that of the individual 
Christian and of the Church. In possessing it, 
we still sit under his shadow, and eat of his 
fruit. 

In the same way, our works done for others 
ought to be for their benefit, not for their 
damage. All fruit is not good fruit. And so 
we may be very idly busy, or we may be very 
mischievously busy. But as a good tree pro- 
duces good fruit, so we ought to produce 
good works, useful unto others. " As we have 
therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all 



302 VENETIAN SERMONS 

men." Let us, as St. Paul exhorts, " learn to 
maintain good works for necessary uses, that 
we be not unfruitful." The leaves of our 
life-trees ought to be for " the healing of the 
nations." And let us also lay to heart the 
warning, " Every tree that bringeth not forth 
good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." 
(4) The fourth characteristic of the olive tree 
to be noted is its beauty. — The olive tree is a 
beautiful tree. Like the trees in the Garden 
of Eden, or, as it ought to be rendered, the 
" Garden of Delight," it is " pleasant to the 
eyes, as well as good for food." And God, 
speaking by the prophet Hosea, says (xiv. 5, 6), 
'' I will be as the dew unto Israel : he shall grow 
as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. 
His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall 
be as the olive tree." The leaf of the olive, 
first mentioned in Scripture as brought to 
Noah by the dove, by which he knew that even 
from the lower hills and sunny valleys the 
waters had abated, is beautiful. Mr. Ruskin 
says {Proserpine^ 39), "There is nothing so con- 
stantly noble as the pure leaf of the laurel, bay, 
orange, and olive, numerable, sequent, perfect 
in setting, divinely simple and serene." And 
again {Froserpine^ 162), "The olive leaf is, 
without any rival, the most beautiful of the 



THE OLIVE TREE 303 

leaves of timber trees ; " and, speaking of its 
blossom, he says, "And its blossom, though 
minute, (is) of extreme beauty." And to look 
up from below into a grove of olive trees, 
with their strangely twisted gnarled trunks, is 
to look upon a scene of rare picturesqueness ; 
whilst to look down upon their tops from 
above is to gaze upon a rich wide-spreading 
green velvet mantle. Nothing, too, is more 
beautiful, than the shimmer of the sunshine 
on their dancing leaves, whose colour changes 
with the changeful sky above. 

And there was doubtless a rare beauty, 
physical, intellectual, and moral, about him 
who said, " I am like a green olive tree." 
We read that when a young man he was 
spoken of as " a comely person," and in the 
account of his anointing by Samuel, he is 
described as the youngest of seven sons, and 
as being " withal of a beautiful countenance, 
and goodly to look to." His personality must 
have been most striking and attractive, and, 
like that of many great men, fascinating and 
irresistible in its influence. He was a popular 
hero. Moral chivalry and beauty not only 
adorned many of his recorded deeds, but were 
inherent qualities of his mind and heart. 

And no doubt beauty is an accompaniment 



304 VENETIAN SERMONS 

of godliness. Beauty — intellectual, moral, and 
spiritual — is often the product of goodness, 
and such even is physical beauty; 

*' For of the soul, the body form doth take, 
For soul is form and doth the body make." 

Prayer, the study of God's Word, communion 
with God, have physical effects. As a writer 
has said, " As the soul grows better or worse, 
it shows itself through its tabernacle of clay." 
" They see his face, and his name is in their 
foreheads." There is such a thing as the beauty 
of holiness, which makes the plainest face at- 
tractive. God's words regarding His children 
still hold true, their '' beauty shall be as the 
olive tree." Still He gives them " beauty for 
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment 
of praise for the spirit of heaviness ; that they 
may be called trees of righteousness, the plant- 
ing of the Lord, that he might be glorified." 

(5) Then there is the labour of the olive, — 
All these valuable characteristics of the olive, 
its evergreenness, fruitfulness, usefulness, and 
beauty, do not come without thought and care 
and work. The tree requires to be tended and 
nourished and pruned, and the ground around 
it must be digged and enriched. I have seen, 
on the Riviera, trenches dug round the trees 



THE OLIVE TREE 305 

into which materials, woollen rags especially, 
were thrown, that the tree might draw nourish- 
ment from them. The olive tree, too, has 
many enemies. What is called the olive fly 
attacks the fruit, caterpillars attack the leaves, 
a fungus growth may attack the tree itself. 
All this means constant care ; hence Habakkuk 
speaks of the " labour of the olive." 

And David laboured to maintain his heart 
right with God, his walk close with God. 
How earnestly he prays, " Cleanse thou me 
from secret faults," and " Search me, O God, 
and try me." In the Fifty-first Psalm, which 
immediately precedes the one from which my 
text is taken, how earnestly he longs for for- 
giveness and cleansing. How he loved the 
small portion of Scripture he possessed, and 
how he delighted in it ! " O how love I thy 
law ! it is my meditation all the day." 

In like manner, in the life of the Christian 
there must be labour in order to success. The 
Christian must co-operate with God. He 
must be a fellow-worker with God. He must 
wait upon God, he must watch unto prayer. 
He must be diligent in his study of the 
Scriptures. He must " strive to enter in at 
the strait gate." He must " work out his own 
salvation with fear and trembling," knowing 



306 VENETIAN SERMONS 

that it is God that worketh in him, '' both to 
will and to do of his good pleasure." 

(6) Lastly^ the olive tree^ before it can he 
worth anything^ must he grafted, — It is not an 
olive tree in its natural state of which the 
Psalmist speaks. There is a wild olive tree, 
or oleaster, which is very different from the 
one we have been considering. It is small in 
stature, with thorny branches. It produces 
but few berries, and these contain a burning 
pungent essence, and yield little or no oil. 
Its wood cannot be worked into beautiful 
articles — its end is to be burned. An olive 
tree, then, to be good and useful, must be 
grafted. There are many kinds of olive trees — 
some thirty-five species have been distinguished 
— but this condition of goodness and usefulness 
holds true of them all. All must be grafted : 
that is to say, a good branch must be engrafted 
upon the wild stock, when the tree will become 
good. In harmony with this fact David, com- 
paring himself to a green olive tree, adds the 
words, " in the house of God." All was 
explained by his nearness to God, by his living 
in fellowship with God. David's heart was 
touched, and changed. He is described as 
having been a man " after God's own heart," 
and that is the key to his character and life. 



THE OLIVE TREE 307 

It is so always. Those who are " trees of 
righteousness, the planting of the Lord," have 
all been grafted. They have received " with 
meekness the engrafted word," which is able 
to save their souls. They have become subject 
to an heavenly influence. The Holy Spirit 
has put grace into their hearts. They have 
been regenerated, converted, born again. St. 
Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans (chap. xi. 
17), speaking of the engrafting of the Gentiles 
upon the Jewish Church, says it is like the 
grafting of a wild olive branch on a good 
stock, that it might partake of the root and 
fatness of the olive tree, which operation is 
" contrary to nature," but it can be done. 

And so, we are all by nature wild olive 
trees, and we all need engrafting, and whether 
we view this as brought about by Divine grace 
implanted in us, which is according to a natural 
process, or by our being engrafted on Christ, 
which is against nature, the result is the same. 
For in any case a process of engrafting must 
take place, and a consequent radical change 
produced in each one, before he can become 
" a green olive tree in the house of God." 

The question for us is, have we been en- 
grafted, or have we not ? Are we wild olive 
trees, or are we good olive trees ? If we are 



308 VENETIAN SERMONS 

wild olive trees, let us seek and pray to be 
changed, to be converted. And let us do so 
now, for it is in the kingdom of men as in 
the kingdom of nature, it is with people as 
with trees, it is the more difficult to engraft 
them the older they become. 

May God grant that all of us may be able 
to use the language of David, in the spirit 
in which he used it — not in boastfulness, but 
in humble thoughtfulness for divine mercy 
vouchsafed to us: "But I am like a green 

OLIVE TREE IN THE HOUSE OF GoD." 



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